As the new academic year kicks off, I am deeply honored to be appointed as the holder of the prestigious June and Gene Gillis Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Manufacturing Systems Engineering.
I am grateful for the support of the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Cockrell School of Engineering, especially for the nomination by Dr. Don Siegel. Most importantly, this recognition would not have been possible without my students—past and present. I owe immense thanks to all the members of SiDi Lab with whom I’ve had the privilege to work.
In learning more about the Gillis family, I was inspired by the remarkable career of M. E. “Gene” Gillis, who graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 1951 with a degree in chemical engineering and went on to lead Exxon Chemical Americas as President and Senior Vice President of Exxon Chemical Company. His legacy has touched generations of UT faculty through this endowment.
In particular, I feel encouraged knowing the distinguished professors who have held this fellowship before me—such as Dr. John Hasenbein in the ORIE program and Dr. Kristin Wood, a leading figure in engineering design research. It is truly humbling to follow in their footsteps.
Thank you to UT and to the generous Gillis family for making this fellowship possible. It’s time for me to honor the legacy it represents and to carry it forward in my next career chapter.
awards
FIRE Program’s Winning Project: Swarm Manufacturing with Robotics
In Fall 2024, SiDi Lab hosted a group of three freshmen students, Ian Clark, Parth Mehta, and Retvin Pant, through the Freshman Introduction to Research in Engineering (FIRE) program at the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering. Their project, “Swarm Manufacturing with Robotics,” mentored by PhD student Ronnie Stone, won first place in the final design competition. In this project, the team designed a novel fused deposition modeling (FDM) extruder system for robotic arm-enabled 3D printing, building an important link in realizing swarm-inspired hybrid manufacturing. Congratulations to the team for their impressive work, as they just joined UT ME for the first semester! Check out the demo below and stay tuned for our next design iteration.
Dr. Sha Named Walker Scholar
Dr. Zhenghui Sha has been selected as a Walker Scholar by the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. The Walker Scholar Award recognizes early-career faculty (Assistant or Associate Professors) who have made significant contributions to research, teaching, and service. Congratulations to all SiDi Lab members whose efforts and dedication made this happen!
2023 JMD Editor’s Choice Award Honorable Mention
Our paper “Graph Neural Network-based Design Decision Support for Shared Mobility Systems” won the 2023 ASME Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD) Editor’s Choice (Best Paper) Award Honorable Mention. Congratulations to Yinshuang Xiao, the first author of this paper, on this remarkable achievement! Her dedication and hard work were truly pivotal to the depth and completeness of the work.
The selection of awards was guided by the following criteria: (i) fundamental value of the contribution, (ii) expectation of archival value (e.g., expected number of citations), (iii) practical relevance to mechanical design, and (iv) quality of presentation.
The preprint: Y. Xiao, F. Ahmed, Z. Sha, “Graph Neural Network-based Design Decision Support for Shared Mobility Systems,” Journal of Mechanical Design, volume 145, issue 9, pp: 091703 (13).
PhD Students Siyu Chen, Bam Thongmak, and Ronnie Stone Receive Prestigious Awards and Fellowships
Three PhD students won various fellowships and awards recently. Congratualtions them on receiving these prestigous recognitions! Way to go!
Siyu Chen was selected to receive the George J. Heuer, Jr. Ph.D. Endowed Graduate Fellowship from the Cockrell School of Engineering in the academic year 2024-2025.
Ronnie Stone was selected to receive the travel award from NSF to attend the SFF conference. He was also selected to receive the NSF travel support to attend the 2024 Frontiers in Design Representation (FinDeR) Summer School held at the University of Maryland.
Bam Thongmak was selected as one of the 2024 Broadening Participation (BPart) Fellows by the Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) Technical Committee of ASME. The pictures were taken during the IDETC/CIE 2024 Conference in DC.
SiDi LAB | Discover More 