Theoretical & Applied Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
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05/17/2016
Ben (MSc), Horan, Yoli, Samanvay, Abhinav, Siyu, Abhimanyu, Sri Krisha, Sugin, Matthew, Kevin, Bofan and Sahil (MEng) graduated. Congratulations to all!
2021
- May 2021: Taflab MEng Capstone team (Rebecca Sung, Henry Fong and James Liao), advised by PhD candidate Alexandre Immas, was granted the Audience Choice Award at the 10th annual Berkeley MEng Capstone showcase, which took place on May 6th 2021. The team presented the project “Unmanned Underwater Vehicle with Wireless, LED-based Optical Communication System for Ocean Exploration”. The showcase had a record-high number of 700 registered attendees, and 30 MEng teams presented their year-long capstone projects in their respective virtual booths.
May 2021: Taflab MEng Capstone team (Rita Chen, Michael Kotur, Ian Miller and Shifeng Ma) received Honorable Mention in the Fung Institute Mission Award for the project “Waves to Water: Extracting Drinking Water from the Ocean for Coastal Communities and Disaster Relief.”
March 2021: The UC Berkeley Marine Energy Collegiate Competition Team (MECC) taught two sessions on Marine Energy to 70 students at the Berkeley SPLASH! high school program. This was a virtual event where the highschool students learned about the different marine energy resources, the different designs for wave energy converters and tidal turbines, and proposed their own designs!
- January 2021: A newly accepted manuscript “Why does water shoot higher if we partially block the garden hose outlet?“ for American Journal of Physics
- January 2021: Reza is a Faculty Judge for the 2021 Statewide Undergraduate Research Symposium for the UC-Systemwide California Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP) program. Awards Ceremony is on Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 7:00pm PST. (check out CAMP youtube channel)
2020
November 2020: Mehdi will give a talk in the upcoming (virtual) 73rd Annual meeting of the American Physical Society DFD [see more here] on “Learning to Cloak Swimming Objects in Viscous Environments using a Flock of Artificially Intelligent micro-Robots” [Online Abstract]
October 2020: Our new article, titled as “Active Cloaking in Stokes Flows via Reinforcement Learning”, is now published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics! [PDF]
July 2020: Our recently published paper (“Stealthy Movements and Concealed Swarms of Swimming micro-Robots”) is now highlighted as the Editor’s Pick by the Physics of Fluids editorial board at the American Institute of Physics publishing group. [Publisher Version]
- July 2020: Our new article, titled as “Stealthy Movements and Concealed Swarms of Swimming micro-Robots”, is now published in Physics of Fluids by the American Institute of Physics! [PDF]
- June 2020 – The SD CAL Desal team led by Michael and including TAFLAB members Remi, Cindy, Zishen, Caleb, Yichi, Aeden, and Ivan were announced among the 17 winners of the DESIGN Stage of the U.S. Department of Energy Waves to Water Prize. They iterated on their design for a portable wave-powered desalination system coastal disaster recovery. https://americanmadechallenges.org/wavestowater/design.html
- February 2020 – Alex attended the Underwater Intervention conference in New Orleans, LA and the Subsea Tieback Forum & Exhibition in San Antonio, TX.
- January 2020 – Alex received an Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for customer discovery of his work on developing autonomous underwater robotic systems for ocean exploration and marine conservation. Alex used this grant to explore business models and to approach potential customers and partners among subsea research and marine service industries.
- January 2020: Mehdi received the William S. Floyd Jr. Fellowship, and the UC Berkeley Graduate Division Block Grant Award!
2019
- November 2019: Mehdi will be giving a talk in the 72nd annual meeting of the American Physical Society DFD, on “Stealthy Movements of Micro-Swimmer Flocks”, Nov. 26th 2019, Seattle, WA. [Online Abstract]
- November 2019 – The SD CAL Desal team led by Michael and including TAFLAB members Caleb, Yichi, and Taylor were announced among the 20 winners of the CONCEPT Stage of the U.S. Department of Energy Waves to Water Prize. They proposed a portable wave-powered desalination system making use of inflatables and reverse osmosis desalination for coastal disaster recovery. https://americanmadechallenges.org/wavestowater/concept
- September 2019 – The lab received a Cyber-Physical-System (CPS) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support its research on Re-configurable Swarm of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for Underwater Wireless Communication. The goal of this project is to achieve high-bandwidth underwater wireless communication using a flock of small Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) that relay a laser beam from the seabed to the surface of the ocean.
- September 2019: Our new paper on “Hydrodynamics of active micro-swimmer near an elastic interface” is now published in Physical Review E. The paper is the result of a close collaboration with a great group of researchers from University of Düsseldorf, Princeton University, Vienna University of Technology, and Bayreuth University. [PDF]
- June 2019 – Michael and Alex attended the International Conference on Ocean, Offshore & Arctic Engineering (OMAE) 2019 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK! Alex presented papers titled “Optimization of a Swarm of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for High-Bandwidth Underwater Wireless Communication” and “High-bandwidth underwater wireless communication using a swarm of autonomous underwater vehicles”, and Michael presents on “Shape Optimization of a Submerged Pressure Differential Wave Energy Converter for Load Reductions.”
- May 2019 – Alex received a Link Foundation Ocean Engineering and Instrumentation Fellowship to support his work on swarms of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) and Underwater Wireless Optical Communication (UWOC). The Link Foundation was established in 1953 by Edwin A. and Marion C. Link. More information about the Link Foundation can be found on their website at the following URL: https://www.binghamton.edu/link-foundation/index.html
- May 2019: Mehdi received the 2019 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award from UC Berkeley Graduate Division!
- April 2019: Mehdi is selected as a Fellow of the 17th Annual UC Berkeley Summer Institute for Preparing Future Faculty!
- February 2019 – Alex attended the Oceanology International Americas in San Diego, CA.
- January 2019: Mehdi received the Anselmo Macchi Fellowship, as well as the UC Berkeley Graduate Division Block Grant Award!
2018
December 2018. Michael attended the International Platform on Ocean Energy for Young Researchers held in Saga, Japan in December. He was awarded the best presentation for wave energy.
01/03/2016
01/03/2016 A great news that our Wave Carpet idea, under the project name CalWave, was just announced (01/03/2016) as one of the 9 finalist for the Department of Energy “Wave Energy Prize”. We competed with 16 other teams qualified from the original 90 teams. The outcome was based on cross examination of experimental tests done at Iowa wave basin, and the modeling performed. To make the news more exciting, Berkeley’s project CalWave is THE first standing (with the combined score 6.4) among all teams.
Congratulations to all members of the prize team and the entire project, prize team led by Marcus Lehmann Bryan, Christian, Daniel, Devin, Jack, Jan, Joel, Kevin, Nigel, Ninh, Sean, Shuangjiu, Simon, Thomas, and the Wave Carpet MEng students: Bofan, Kevin, Matt, Sahil Sri Krishna, Sugin,
05/05/2016
“CalWave Wave Carpet WEC – Prototype” team wins the “Best Project Presentation Audience Choice Award” in the Masters of Engineering Capstone Showcase hosted by UC Berkeley Fung Institute of Engineering Leadership on May 4, 2016. CalWave Wave Carpet WEC – Prototype team (M.Eng): 1) Sahil Kudroli 2) Matt Zebiak 3) Sugin Lou
03/18/2016
Our Wave Carpet project featured on Berkeley’s website front page (read the news article)
03/03/2016
Mathieu’s goodbye get-together
2016
- 11/18/2016 Ahmad wins John and Janet McMurtry award
- 11/16/2016 A great news that our Wave Carpet idea, under the project name CalWave won the second place in the Department of Energy Wave Energy Prize
- 02/22/2016 Qiuchen Guo wins “Ocean Technology Graduate Fellowship”
- 01/29/2016 Marcus Lehmann named to the 2016 “Forbes 30 under 30” for his work on the wave carpet [Link].
This is an amazing news, and a result of Marcus’ very hard work, persistence, perseverance, focus and sacrifices he made to get this work going.
Congratulations Marcus!
2015
- 11/18/2015 : Louis-Alexandre Couston wins “Frank and Margaret Lucas Scholarship“
- 12/14/2015 TAF Lab organizes the “Second Berkeley Workshop on Harvesting Renewable Energy” on Friday 18th 2015. The programm, including the list of speakers and topics can be found [here].
- 10/2/2015 Louis, Quichen and Reza’s paper “Fabry-Perot resonance of water waves” appeared in Physical ReviewE.
- 10/1/2015 Science news coverage on Retrograde turn of rolling rings [link]
- 9/25/2015 APS news coverage on Amir et. al. paper [link]
- 9/22/2015 Synopsis Physics coverage for Amir et. al. paper [link]
- 9/22/2016 Amir, Milad and Reza’s paper “Terminal Retrograde turn of rolling rings” appeared in Physical Review E [pdf].
- 9/9/2015 “Microsimmer-induced chaotic mixing” appeared in Journal of Fluid Mechanics
- 8/14/2015 Ocean Cloaking on the cover of American Scientist [link]
- 6/6/2015 Ahmad’s paper “Cloaking in shallow water via nonlinear media transformation” appeared in Journal of Fluid Mechanics [pdf]
- 3/1/2015 Loui’s paper “Landslide Tsunamis in Lakes” appeared in Journal of Fluid Mechanics [pdf]
2014
- 10/01/2014 TAFLab’s Wave Carpet wins Foundry award.
- 9/16/2014 Yong and Reza’s paper “Asymmetric flexural-gravity lumps in nonuniform media,” appeared in Physics of Fluids (Vol.26, Issue 9). [pdf]
- 5/21/2014 TAFLab crowdfunding campaign was featured in California Magazine.
- 5/15/2014 Reza wins Hellmann Fellowship Award.
- 4/4/2014 Ben Zhang wins SURF Fellowship.
- 4/4/2014 Zach Lentz received SURF Rose Hills Fellowship.
- 4/4/2014 Louis Alexandre Couston received Graduate Division Block Grant Award.
- 3/5/2014 Ahmad Zareei received American Bureau of Shipping’s Ocean Technology Graduate Student Fellowship.
2013
- 12/13/2013 Ryan Elandt’s paper, “Gravity Wave Lensing”, co-authored by Mostafa and Reza, was accepted for publication in Physical Review E.
- 10/10/2013 Marcus Lehmann won BERC ENERGY WEEK 2013 prize for a Poster on Wave Carpet Co-authored by Ryan, Henry, Mostafa and Reza.
- 08/14/2013 Yong’s work “Finite Depth Capillary-Gravity Dromions” has been accepted for publication in Physical Review E.
- 04/18/2013 Henry Pham receieved SURF/Rose Hills Fellowship for the coming summer.
- 03/05/2013 Riding the Wave: Our research on cloaking was a subject of an article on Berkeley Innovation magazine. (see online edition: Riding the waves)
- 03/03/2013 Our paper titled “Three dimensional Fully Localized Waves on Ice-Covered Ocean” was just accepted for presentation and full-paper publication in the proceeding of 32nd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering (OMAE 2013) in Nantes, France (from June 9 to 14, 2013).
- Feb. 2013 The paper “Dromions of Flexural-Gravity Wave” is now available online. [Link]
2012
- Nov.2012 Our recent manuscript “Dromions of Flexural-Gravity Waves” is now in press in Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
- July 2012 Professor Alam, a session organizer and chair for Ronald Yeung Honoring Symposium on Offshore and Ship Hydrodynamics (OMAE 2012, July 1-6, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) gave a talk titled “A Flexible Seafloor Carpet for High-Performance Wave Energy Extraction”. The associated paper (OMAE 2012-84034) is now published in the proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Artic Engineering (OMAE 2012).
- June 2012 Our paper “Nonlinear Analysis of an Actuated Seafloor-Mounted Carpet for a High-Performance Wave Energy Extraction” is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences.
Also check out Focus BBC August 2012 issue. Refer to page 20, under “This Month Top Science Stories from around the Globe”. Link to the article (requires subscription).
- May 2012 Professor Alam delievered an invited talk for the American Bureau of Shipping’s first International Technology Forum.
- May 2012 Ritwik Gosh (PhD student – TAFLab) was awarded American Bureau of Shipping’s Ocean Technology Graduate Fellowship for 2012-2013.
- Feb 2012 Our paper “Cloaked in Stratified Field” is published in Physical Review Letters .
