As recipient of the 2018 Robert M. Nerem Education and Mentorship Medal from the ASME, I was asked to prepare an article to contribute my reflections on these topics, that arise whenever we offer advice and guidance to our younger colleagues. This represents my personal views on Bob Nerem, after whom the award is named, my experiences that have impacted me as a mentor, and some words of advice, offered cautiously and with qualifications, with regard to best practices in mentoring.

Student engagement is an essential aspect of educational environments, and this is especially true for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, where student engagement declines in middle and high school years. Techniques for bolstering student engagement, such as hands-on learning, may be especially effective in the field of biomechanics since this discipline is rooted in STEM and has fundamental applications to everyday movement. To this end, this paper describes 1) the perceptions of student teachers in their first year of tertiary (undergraduate) education regarding the biomechanics content from their secondary (high school) education, and 2) a professional development initiative, in the form of a discipline specific teacher training workshop, to enhance biomechanics resources for teachers via peer networking. The perception of student teachers in their first year of tertiary education in teaching indicated a positive relationship between perception of secondary school teaching quality and self-confidence with specific biomechanical concepts. Open responses focused on the need to cover concepts thoroughly, using practical activities where possible, and taking time to ensure understanding before progressing to more advanced concepts. The teacher training workshop provided secondary school Physical Education teachers with an opportunity to network nationally with other teachers across New Zealand, and internationally with university-based biomechanics researchers. Peer focus groups helped to design and refine sets of experiential learning activities that could be easily implemented in the classroom.

The goal of this paper is to explore how different modeling approaches for constructing function structure models and different levels of model completion affect the ability to make inferences (reason) on the resulting information within the respective models. Specifically, the function structure models are used to predict market prices of products, predictions that are then compared based on their accuracy and precision. This work is based on previous studies on understanding how function modeling and the use of topological information from design graphs can be used to predict information with historical training. It was found that forward chaining was the least favorable chaining type irrespective of the level of completion, whereas the backward-chaining models performed relatively better across all completion levels. Given the poor performance of the nucleation models at the highest level of completion, future research must be directed toward understanding and employing the methods yielding the most accuracy. Moreover, the results from this simulation-based study can be used to develop modeling guidelines for designers or students, when constructing function models.

Students from Princeton University partnered with students from the American University in Cairo in a three-week intensive hands-on field experience in Egypt. The project was to assemble, install, and test a wind mill-driven pump used for irrigation and to survey communities across Egypt in the Delta and Red Sea coast to assess water needs in these communities. The course offered a perspective on sustainable development in Egypt followed by water and energy resource challenges in Egypt's diverse geographic areas. Students assembled a wind pump and installed it at the American University in Cairo for testing prior to installation at El Heiz, a desert oasis community in the Western Desert. The students were selected from diverse backgrounds in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Operations Research and Financial Engineering, and learned the value of having diverse teams address engineering problems in a truly global context. This paper presents the case study including lessons learned in implementation of this experiential learning field project.

Venture capital funding is booming, but the money goes largely to software, health, and life sciences startups. This feature looks at four companies—all in different stages of development—founded by mechanical engineers who have figured out how to succeed with hardware-focused businesses despite the odds. This article tells the story of four companies whose projects range from balloon-fired satellite launchers and robotic welders for small factories to farm equipment that thins plants autonomously and electric buses.

In the optical communication, people use the optical fibers to achieve the high bitrate data transmission. In this paper, the AB system for the ultra-short pulses in anonlinear optical fiber is investigated via the Lie symmetry analysis. Lie symmetries and symmetry reductions are derived via the Lie algorithm. Periodic- and solitary-wave solutions are obtained via the qualitative consideration. Nonlinear self-adjointness of the AB system is proved, and conservation laws associated with the Lie symmetries are constructed. For the magnitude of the electric field in the optical fiber and the function associated with the occupation number which gives a measure of the atomic inversion in the nonlinear optical fiber, we can adjust the amplitudes, widths and velocities of the solitary waves via the Lie symmetry transformations. The results would help the engineers select the ultra-short pulses in the optical communication.

The solid expandable tubular technology is a newly developing technology that can optimize the wellbore structure, improve the safety of drilling and reduce the cost of drilling significantly in the oil drilling field. It can be applied to the process of drilling, completion and work-over operations. The expansion force in the expansion process is a vital index in the expandable tubular technology. The prediction of the expansion force not only helps to determine the strength margin of the tubular in the engineering, but also contributes the field engineers to choose the appropriate hydraulic equipment. In this paper, the rigid-perfectly plastic model and the linear reinforced rigid plastic model were employed to derive the expansion force expression of TWIP steel expandable tubular. Based on the single curve hypothesis and the Mises flow criterion, the analytical solution of the expansion force was obtained. Then the corresponding FEM models were established to verify the correctness and applicable scope of the expansion force expression under different influence factors. It was found that the expansion force difference of the two material models have similar variation trend under different conditions. The accuracy and applicability of the expansion force expression results of the linear reinforced rigid plastic model improve as the expansion ratio increases and the expansion cone angle decreases.

The use of additive manufacturing (AM) has increased in many industries, resulting in a commensurate need for a workforce skilled in AM. To meet this need, educational institutions are integrating design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) into the engineering curriculum. However, limited research has explored the impact of these educational interventions in bringing about changes in the technical goodness of students' design outcomes. This study explores this gap through experimentation with 193 participants recruited from a junior-level, mechanical engineering design course. Participants were split into three educational intervention groups: (1) no DfAM, (2) restrictive DfAM, and (3) restrictive and opportunistic (dual) DfAM. The effects of the educational intervention on the participants' use of DfAM were measured through changes in (1) participants' DfAM self-efficacy, (2) technical goodness of their AM design outcomes, and (3) participants' use of DfAM-related concepts when describing and evaluating their AM designs. The results showed that while all three educational interventions result in similar changes in the participants' opportunistic DfAM self-efficacy, participants who receive only restrictive DfAM inputs show the greatest increase in their restrictive DfAM self-efficacy. Further, we see that despite these differences, all three groups show a similar decrease in the technical goodness of their AM designs, after attending the lectures. These results emphasize the need for DfAM education to encourage the use of both opportunistic and restrictive DfAM during student design challenges. Results also highlight the possible influence of the problem statement on the use of DfAM in solving it.

In recent years, advances in medical imaging and three-dimensional (3D) additive manufacturing techniques have increased the use of 3D-printed anatomical models for surgical planning, device design and testing, customization of prostheses, and medical education. Using 3D-printing technology, we generated patient-specific models of mitral valves from their pre-operative cardiac imaging data and utilized these custom models to educate patients about their anatomy, disease, and treatment. Clinical 3D transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography images were acquired from patients referred for mitral valve repair surgery and segmented using 3D modeling software. Patient-specific mitral valves were 3D-printed using a flexible polymer material to mimic the precise geometry and tissue texture of the relevant anatomy. 3D models were presented to patients at their pre-operative clinic visit and patient education was performed using either the 3D model or the standard anatomic illustrations. Afterward, patients completed questionnaires assessing knowledge and satisfaction. Responses were calculated based on a 1–5 Likert scale and analyzed using a nonparametric Mann–Whitney test. Twelve patients were presented with a patient-specific 3D-printed mitral valve model in addition to standard education materials and twelve patients were presented with only standard educational materials. The mean survey scores were 64.2 (±1.7) and 60.1 (±5.9), respectively (p = 0.008). The use of patient-specific anatomical models positively impacts patient education and satisfaction, and is a feasible method to open new opportunities in precision medicine.

Professor Y. C. Fung has made superb contributions to science, engineering, and humanity through his research and its applications, as well as his words and deeds. By setting the highest standards of rigor and excellence, training many outstanding students and their students, and providing his exemplary leadership, Dr. Fung has made tremendous impacts that spread across the world and transcend time. He established the foundations of biomechanics in a variety of living tissues, including the lung, the heart, blood vessels, blood cells, ureter, intestine, skin, as well as other organs and tissues. Through his vision of the power of “making models” to explain and predict biological phenomena, Dr. Fung opened up new horizons for bioengineering, from organs/systems to molecules/genes. He has initiated and fostered the research activities in many institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. He has made outstanding contributions to education in bioengineering, as well as service to the professional organizations and translation to industry and clinical medicine. He is widely recognized as the Father of Biomechanics and the leading Bioengineer in the world. His extraordinary accomplishments and commands in science, engineering, and the arts make him a Renaissance Man whom the world is most fortunate to have.