Diane Peters won 2nd place for her oral presentation in the Design and Control session at the Engineering Graduate Symposium on November 13th. Her presentation was on "A Priori Determination of Coupling in Design/Control (Co-Design) Systems using the Controllability Grammian Matrix."

Michael Alexander, Steven Hoffenson, and Diane Peters delivered oral presentations, and Diane Peters and Tahira Reid presented posters at the College of Engineering's annual Engineering Graduate symposium on November 13th. The presentations were titled, respectively, "Managing Vector-Valued Coupling Variables in Electric Vehicle Powertrain System Optimization," "Vehicle Design Optimization for Occupant Crash Safety and Fuel Economy Using Multi-body Dynamic Modeling," and "A Priori Determination of Coupling in Design/Control (Co-Design) Systems using the Controllability Grammian Matrix"; the posters were titled "Sequential Optimization of Coupled Design/Control (Co-Design) Systems using Control Proxy Functions," and "Quantifying Perceived Environmental Friendliness (PEF) for Inclusion in an Optimization Framework: An Automotive Case Study."

Diane Peters presented at the Society of Women Engineers National Conference in Long Beach, California, on Friday, October 16th. Her talk was titled "Success and Challenges as a Returning Student."

Yi Ren successfully defended his preliminary examination on September 8th, 2009. His research proposal is titled "Interactive Industrial Design for Preference Elicitation."

Bart Frischknecht, Diane Peters, and Tahira Reid presented papers at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Design Engineering Technical Conference in San Diego, California, August 30-September 2, 2009, respectively titled "Methods for Evaluating Suitability of Econometric Demand Models in Design for Market Systems," "On Measures of Coupling Between the Artifact and Controller Optimal Design Problems," and "A Methodology for Quantifying the Perceived Environmental Friendliness of Vehicle Silhouettes in Engineering Design."

Julie Reyer has been promoted to Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering and has accepted a position as the Assistant Dean for Student Success for the College of Engineering at Bradley University effective August 2009.

Diane Peters presented a poster, "Optimal Co-design of Controlled Systems and their Controllers", at the National Science Foundation CMMI Grantees' Conference, June 22-25, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Diane Peters has been selected as a finalist in the Society of Women Engineers Collegiate Poster Competition - Graduate Student Division. Final judging will take place at the SWE Conference in Long Beach, CA in October.

Tahira Reid delivered a presentation co-authored with Bart Frischknecht and Steven Hoffenson, titled "A Design Science Approach to Understanding Changes in the Automotive Vehicle Industry" at the Second International Engineering Systems Symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 17, 2009.

Michael Alexander successfully defended his preliminary examination on June 17th, 2009. His research proposal is titled "Managing Vector-Valued Coupling Variables in Analytical Target Cascading."

Steven Hoffenson successfully defended his preliminary examination on June 17th, 2009. His research proposal is titled "A Modeling Framework for Assessing and Optimizing Automobile Design for Improved Crash Safety and Sustainability."

Bart Frischknecht successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation titled "A Study of Public and Private Tradeoffs in Optimal Vehicle Design Using a Market Systems Approach" on June 10th.

Katie Whitefoot successfully completed her Qualifier Examination in Design Science on June 9th in the research area of characterizing the impacts of environmental policies on design trade-off decisions.

Katie Whitefoot delivered the presentation "Evaluating the Suitability of Econometric Demand Models in Product Design for Market Systems" at the INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, June 4-6, 2009 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Michael Alexander, Bart Frischknecht, and Steven Hoffenson delivered presentations at the 8th World Congress on Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, June 1-5, 2009, in Lisbon, Portugal. Michael's talk was titled "Reduced Representations of Vector-Valued Coupling Variables in Decomposition-based Design Optimization", Bart's talk, which was co-authored with Diane Peters, was titled "Pareto Set Analysis: Local Measures of Objective Coupling in Multi-objective Design Optimization", and Steven's talk was titled "An Optimization Approach to Occupant Safety and Fuel Economy in Vehicle Design".

Kukhyun Ahn, Michael Alexander, Steven Hoffenson, Michael Kokkolaras, Kwang Jae Lee, Yogita Pai, Diane Peters, and Yi Ren presented their work at the 15th annual Automotive Research Center Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan on May 12-13, 2009.

Kukhyun Ahn delivered a presentation titled, "Design Optimization of Motor/Generator Full-Load Characteristics in Two-Mode Hybrid Vehicles," at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) World Congress in Detroit on April 21, 2009.

Steven Hoffenson was awarded a Mortar Board National Foundation fellowship award for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Bart Frischknecht was awarded the University of Michigan American Society for Engineering Education (UM-ASEE) Outstanding Student Instructor Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions in engineering education as an instructor for Analytical Product Design (DESCI501/ME455/ARTDES300), in April 2009.

Shanna Daly gave a presentation "Teachers' beliefs, intentions, and uses of models of nanoscale phenomena for NSEE" at the semi-annual national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City, Utah, March 22-25, 2009.

Shanna Daly co-led a short course, "The Next Big Thing is Small: Inquiry-Based Lessons in Nanoscience", and gave two presentations, "Models of Nanoscale Phenomena: Seeing What We Can't See" and "Quantum Dots in the Secondary Classroom" at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, March 19-22, 2009.

Shinji Nishiwaki as of April 1, 2009, will be a full professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Science at Kyoto University.

Professor Panos Papalambros received the highest honor of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, the Stephen S. Attwood Award, on March 28, 2009, recognizing his "extraordinary achievement in teaching, research, service, and other activities that have brought distinction to the College and University."

Yi Ren successfully defended his master's thesis entitled "An Interactive Modeling Environment for Automotive Exterior Design" on Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

Katie Whitefoot received the MLK Spirit Award for her community involvement in service and social justice on Thursday, February 19, 2009.

Michael Alexander was awarded the National Society of Black Engineers Board of Corporate Affiliates Scholarship for his great achievement in the academic arena and dedicated service to NSBE and the local campus community on February 19, 2009.

Diane Peters has been selected as the graduate student recipient of the Marian Sarah Parker Prize. This award recognizes a female engineering student who has demonstrated academic excellence, leadership qualities and outstanding contributions to the University and/or community. The award will be officially presented at the College of Engineering 2009 Student Leaders and Honors Brunch on Sunday, March 15, 2009.

Tahira Reid and Diane Peters have been selected as recipients of the College of Engineering's Distinguished Leadership Award. This award is conferred upon undergraduate and graduate students of the College of Engineering who have demonstrated outstanding leadership and service to the College, University, and community. The award will be officially presented at the College of Engineering 2009 Student Leaders and Honors Brunch on Sunday, March 15, 2009.

Ellen Chisa joined the lab in January as a visiting scholar from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, where she's pursuing a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Presently, she's working with Jarod Kelly on developing an Interactive Genetic Algorithm than can be used as a tool to enhance the creativity of inexperienced designers.

On January 14, Kwang Jae Lee successfully completed his preliminary examination. His thesis proposal was titled "Optimal System Design with Geometric Considerations."