On Thursday, December 18, 2008, Weishen ( Darren) Qiu presented his research work on Information Model for Part Family Fixture Design, as part of his MS degree requirement.

Wei Tian successfully defended his MS thesis on Thursday, December 18, 2008. The topic of the thesis was on Signature Analysis of OD Grinding Processes . The project was partially sponsored Siant Gobain company and a WPI fellowship. Congratulations to Wei.

Hua Bai successfully defended her MS thesis on Wednesday, December 17, 2008. The topic of the thesis was on Reverse Supply Chain Coordination and Design for Profitable Returns - An example of ink cartridge. The project was partially sponsored Nypro company, where she is doing internship, and a WPI fellowship. The thesis advisor is Professor Zeng at Management Department. Congratulations to Hua.

Besnik (Nick) Cumani successfully passed the written part of the Ph.D qualifying exam in Manufacturing Engineering on December 9 and 10, 2008. He will take the oral part of the exam soon. If Nick passes the oral exam, he will become a Ph. D candidate. Congratulations to Nick.

The accepted WPI students who are doing summer senior projects (MQP) in China and Korea in 2009 had a get together on Thursday, December 11, 2008. Some of the students who went to China/Korea last summer as well as exchange students from KNU Korea also joined and shared the pizza/soda. They met with the co-director of the WPI-HUST project center, Professor Liang Gao from HUST. Professor Rong went through the project list and the preliminary plan of the program in 2009, with a lot of questions/discussions. It is expected to have around twenty WPI students going to China and Korea in the summer of 2009

Professor Gao from HUST and Professor Rong were invited and participated the U.S.-China-India Innovation Partnerships Conference (http://www.massinsight.org/uci/) at Boston, December 9-12, 2008. The partnership between WPI and HUST on the Senior Project Center was profiled ( http://www.massinsight.org/mpr/up_tmodel4.aspx ) during the conference. They attended the Engineering Deans Meeting in the evening of Wednesday, December 10, 2008 and the Symposium of Global University: Talent and Innovation Partnerships on Friday, December 12, 2008.

Professor Liang Gao, the department head of Industrial Engineering and Co-Director of HUST-WPI Senior Project Center at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan China, visited WPI in December 8-13. Besides meeting with Professor Rong, he met with Professor Gretar Tryggvason, Head of Mechanical Engineering, Professor Zhikun Hou of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor Amy Zeng of Management Engineering. He also met with the students who went to China last summer and the students who will go to China next summer on Thursday, December 11, 2008. Other activities Professor Gao had during his visit include the discussion with Xuekun Li and Lan Yan on the research project on Grinding Process Modeling and Simulation at our CAM-Lab and participate the U.S.-China-India Innovation Partnerships Conference at Boston, MA, as well as touring MIT and Harvard University.

Ph.D candidate, Mr. Bowang (Bose) Xiao gave a seminar to Manufacturing Engineering graduate students and faculty o n his research of “ Air Quenching Of Aluminum Alloy Castings, Part II—Material Constitutive Modeling ”, on Thursday, December 4, 2008. This is part of his Ph. D dissertation.

Professor Amy Zeng of Management and Professor Rong visited Ms. Kelly Aceto, the Associate Direcotr of Center for International Business Education and Research, University of Connecticut on Thursday, December 4, 2008. They discussed on how to assess a new engineering education programs.

Professor Rong and Dr. Hui Wang visited Caterpillar Company at Peoria, IL on Monday, December 1, 2008. They had a meeting with Dr. David Yang, Gary Redhead, and Bala Appalla at CAT Tech Center to discuss the second phase of the project on Computer-aided Modular Welding Fixture Design. They also met with Mike Pershing and Ton Clemson in the Materials group to discuss the CHTE project on High Pressure Hydrogen Quenching. In the same trip, Professor Rong and Hui visited Professor Jack Feng at Bradley University

Traditional CAM-Lab Thanksgiving party was held in the evening of Thursday, November 27, 2008 at Professor Rong’s house. Most of CAM Lab members were getting together, enjoyed turkey and other food, and other activities

Ph.D candidate, Mr. Xuekun (Chris) Li gave a seminar to Manufacturing Engineering graduate students and faculty o n his research of “ Modeling and Simulation of Grinding Processes, Part 2 - Fabrication process analysis based 3D grinding wheel modeling”, on Thursday, November 20, 2008. This is part of his Ph. D dissertation.

Professor Bi Zhang from University of Connecticut visited our CAM Lab on Friday, November 14, 2008. He came to WPI to attend an Applied Grinding Research Seminar and give a technical presentation on Experimental Study on Artificially Ordered Super-hard Wheel for Machining. He spent some time in the afternoon with Professor Rong, Xuekun Li, and Lan Yan to discuss the research work on Grinding at our CAM Lab. .

Ms. Hua Bai gave an MFE seminar on her research on Reverse Supply Chain Coordination and Design for Profitable Returns: An Example of Ink Cartridge, on Thursday, November 13, 2008. This is part of her MS thesis work. She is doing intern at Nypro, Clinton, MA currently. Professor Amy Zeng at Management Department is her major advisor.

Dave Willens is a senior student at WPI with double major at Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering. He participated the ASME Manufacturing Engineering Division Student Design Competition in 2008. After passed the initial evaluation by the organizing committee, he went to Chicago for the final run of the competition. His project is entitled as Three Cylindrical Die Forced Thru-Feed Spline Rolling Adaptation, sponsored by Kinefac Corporation Worcester, MA. Dave won the first place award over the teams from RPI and Northwestern, with $1,000 cash award, see http://divisions.asme.org/med/studentprograms/winners.html . On Wednesday, November 12, 2008, Dave was invited to give a special seminar presentation to MFE graduate students to show how WPI senior students can do high quality research project and generate useful results to impact the real production. Before this Dave was presenting his work at an special section at ASME annual meeting at Boston. He will be also recognized at the Worcester SME Student Chapter, where he is receiving the Outstanding MFE student award on Monday, November 17, 2008.

Visiting Professor Zhenjia Li from Harbin University of Science and Technology, China gave a seminar to our CAM Lab. members on Wednesday, November 12, 2008. He introduced his research work on Milling Cutter Design and Optimization based on Tool Wear Analysis

Al Barry of Stanly Lock and REM visited us on Wednesday, November 12, 2008. The MQP in China and other interested topics were discussed. Al has been supporting the summer MQP program in China for past three years and worked very well with our students. He gave a lot of suggestions on enhancing the program and will continue to support next year.

Dr. Yinggang Tian visited our CAM-Lab. to discussion the project of Signature Analysis of OD Grinding Processes on Tuesday, November 11, 2008. The first phase of the project will be finished this year and will be continued with the second phase. Wei Tian participated the discussion and made the demonstration.

Professor Rong and Bose Xiao visited GM Powertrain at Pontiac, MI, on Friday, November 7, 2008. They gave a final presentation of the project on Residual Stress Analysis of Aluminum Alloy in Air Quenching. Several managers and their research engineers participated in the presentation with a lot of discussions.

Professor Wenzhen Huang from University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth was invited to give a seminar to Manufacturing Engineering Graduate students and faculty members on Thursday, November 6, 2008. He introduced his long time research work on “ Model Based Quality Control for Multi-Stage Assembly Systems in Design and Manufacturing”.

In the first week of B term, the WPI students who are interested in doing summer senior and junior projects (MQP/IQP) in China and Korea in 2009 had a get together on Thursday, October 30, 2008. The students who went to China/Korea last summer as well as exchange students from KNU Korea were invited to join and meet with the incoming students to share their experience in China/Korea. About 40 students participated with a brief introduction by Professor Rong and a lot of questions/discussions. They also enjoyed Piza and soda. It is expected to have more than 20 WPI joining the Asia Project Center for their MQP/IQP in summer 2009.

Professor was invited to visit University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth on Wednesday, October 29, 2008. He gave a seminar there on Computer-aided Production Planning. Professor Rong met Professors Alex Fowler (Department Chair), Farhad Azadivar, Vijaya Chalivendra, Wenzhen Huang, and several graduate students.

Professor Rong and Bose Xiao participated the semi-annual meeting of the Center for Heat Treating Excellence (CHTE) at WPI. They met many old and new friends from the heat treating industry. Particularly two projects were discussed. One is on High Pressure H2 Quenching and the other one is Effective Cooling Systems with Application in Grinding Processes. During the meeting, the collaboration of Scientific Forming Technology Corporation (SFTC) at Columbus, OH and CHTE on the commercialization of CHT technology developed by our group was highly recognized. Professor Rong also introduced this year MQP in China program briefly.

Professor Rong attended the 7 th ASEE Global Colloquium at Cape Town, South Africa in October 19-23, 2008. He has a paper on Integration and Practice of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Engineering Senior Projects, co-authored by Professor Amy Zeng of Management at WPI and Professor Liang Gao from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, there with a poster presentation. Besides participating the presentations and the discussions with colleagues of engineering education, on Thursday, October 23, Professor Rong joined Professor Rick Vaz and James Demetry from WPI to visit the WPI Cape Town IQP project site, together with this year IQP advisors, Professor Scott Jiusto x and R o bert Hersh to understand more about the African society. He also vis i ted the largest city in South Africa, Johannesburg , where he met with his former classmates, Mr. Bin Mu and Fengju Zhou , on Friday, October 24, 2008.

Visiting Professor Zhenjia Li from Harbin University of Science and Technology, China, gave a seminar to CAM Lab members on Wednesday, October 15, 2008. He introduced his long-time research work on Machining Chip Breaking Modeling and Prediction, followed by a lot of discussions. Professor Li was Professor Rong’s advisor when he was doing his senior project at HarUST 27 years ago. He also had several collaborative research projects with Professor Rong in past 15 years, sponsored by both US and China NSF, as well as several manufacturing companies including Ford Powertrain Operations. Professor Li will give another seminar in near future on New Machining Tool (Insert) Development for Milling Operations.

Professor Rong visited GE Component Repair Operations at Cincinnati, OH on Friday, October 10, 2008. One group of WPI senior students were finishing their summer intern and senior project (MQP) there and made the final presentation to the company technical managers and engineers. Their work was highly recognized.

Manufacturing Engineering junior student of WPI, David Willens, received the First Place Prize with $1,000 cash Award at 2008 Student Manufacturing Design Competition. His award winning project is on Three Cylindrical Die Forced Thru-Feed Spline Rolling Adaptation, sponsored by Kinefac Corporation, Worcester, MA. Professor Rong is the advisor. The awards were recognized during the cruise dinner On October 8, 2008 in Chicago, IL. The Second Place Prize winner is Christina Laskowski and team, advised by Professor Daniel Walczyk at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Third Place Prize went to Rui Zhou at Northwestern University, advised by Professor Jian Cao.

Wei Tian gave a seminar to Manufacturing Engineering Program on Thursday, October 2, 2008. His presentation title is Signature Analysis of OD Grinding Processes.

Professor Zhenjia Li from Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin, China, arrived on Wednesday, October 1, 2008. He has visited our CAM Lab several times and had collaborative research projects with us under the support of US NSF, China NSF, and Ford Motor companies. Professor Li was Dr. Rong’s professor when he did his senior project long time ago. Welcome Professor Li to be with us.

Another exchange student from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, Ms. Ji-young Park, arrived on Monday, September 29, 2008. She is the fourth student from KNU, studying at WPI. She will study on Computational Fluid Dynamics with Professor Tryggvason for six months.

Bose Xiao gave a seminar to Manufacturing Engineering graduate students and faculty members on his research on Air Quenching Of Aluminum Alloy Castings, Part I—Heat Transfer Analysis.

Professor Xin Wu at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI visited our CAM-Lab on Wednesday, September 24, 2008. He gave a talk on his recent research on metal forming to all CAM Lab members and interested graduate students in Manufacturing Engineering Program at WPI. Xuekun Li introduced our work on micro-machining and grinding with a good discussion

Wei Tian received an offer as a research staff of Caterpillar Research Center at Peoria, IL. He will graduate with MS in Manufacturing Engineering in December 2008. Wei has accepted the offer and will start working there after the graduation. He is the third CAM-Lab. members hired by Caterpillar in recent three years, after Dr. David Yang and Dr. Radhakrishnan Purushothaman. Congratulations to him.

Xuekun Li gave a seminar to Manufacturing Engineering graduate students and faculty on his research work on Thursday, September 18, 2008. The title of his presentation is modeling and simulation of grinding processes: part 1, framework.

At the monthly meeting of Metal Processing Institute of WPI on Monday, September 15, 2008, Professor Rong showed many pictures taken by the WPI students in the MQP in 2008 China program.

Professor Rong was invited to a reception at NY for welcoming Mr. Jianjun Cen, the new Education Counselor at the Consulate General of China in New York in the evening of Friday, September 12. He also talked to the former Education Counselor, Mr. Fanglin Ai, who is going back to China soon, as well as Mr. Dongbo Fang, the Education Consul in charge of MA.

Professor Rong attended the meeting with UTC colleagues at the Higgins House of WPI on Wednesday, September 10, 2008. The appreciation was shown to the 2008 gift from UTC and Pratt & Whitney (link). Professor Sisson talked on the lessons learned from previous MQP with UTC. He particularly introduced the MQP in China program.

As the new semester started, we had several seminars during September 3-9, 2008, basically to introduce the recent research work to the new members of CAM Lab. The seminars are,

As new semester started, we welcome several new members joining CAM Lab. They are,

Also Mr. Jun Zhou and Mr. Feng Jiang finished their study at WPI as exchange Ph.D students and went back Shandong University, Jinan, China, on September 2 and 11, respectively. We had a good time working with them, appreciate their contribution to the research at our CAM Lab, and wish them the best on returning to their study at SDU.

Professor Paul Gumpel from Hochschule Konstanz Technical University of Applied Science, Hochschule Konstanz, Germany, visited us for a short time. He met with several professors at WPI. The possibility of exchanging students was discussed, particularly in Materials Science and Engineering area.

In the Labor Day weekend, about sixty (plus about twenty kids) CAM Lab alumni and current members as well as their families got together to celebrate Professor Rong’s fifty years birthday and get to know each other. Many of them were from far away in mid-west such as IL, IN, and MI. Details can be seen at http://webrong.byethost14.com

Professor Takashi Matsumura from Tokyo Denki University, Tokyo, Japan visited us on Wednesday, August 27. Mr. Xuekun (Chris) Li and Feng Jiang introduced our recent study on grinding process modeling and simulation. Professor Matsumura introduced his work on micro-machining. A lot of discussions followed.

On August 23, Saturday, Professor Rong visited Washington, DC, to see his long time friends, Professor Xun Xun from University of Auckland, New Zealand and Dr. Ian Wang from NRC Canada, who are participating an IEEE conference there. He also met Dr. Anzy An at Fannie Mae. Anzy was a CAM-Lab member and is going back China as an associate professor of economics at Central Finance University, Beijing, China.

Professor Rong had a meeting with the MQP team at GE Cincinnati on Monday, August 25. Three WPI students did their summer interns at GE Aviation Service Sector and now to start their senior project (MQP) in A term. They had dinner together in the evening of Sunday.

On the way to Cincinnati, OH, on Sunday, August 24, Professor Rong also met with Dr. Lei Zhang, who just left our CAM Lab. Last month and now is working with Scientific Forming Technology Company at Columbus, OH, and Yong Bai, who was also our CAM Lab alumni and working in Cincinnati area.

Fourteen senior students from WPI went to Asia (four to Korea and ten to China) for their Major Qualifying Projects (MQP) this year. They worked with six senior students from Kyungpook National University (KNU) and eighteen senior students at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in mixed teams on eight projects sponsored by Nypro China, CIS Wuxi Operations, Amphenol TCS Changzhou Operations, REM Wuxi, Hwashin Korea and ACS Korea. One additional team with five HUST students did a project for a local company in parallel to the MQP in Asia program. The nine projects were,

NYPRO China MRO Spend Analysis

Waste and Environmental Management in Nypro China

Implementation of Slide Lock Design Process at CIS

Lean Manufacturing implementation at CIS

REM LED Lighting Design

VHDM Connector production line efficiency improvement

Front Lower Arm design and optimization

ACS Hood Latch design and optimization

Cutting & Grinder Machine for Fiber-optical display system component fabrication

The final presentation of the projects was held on August 1, 2008 at HUST. The two teams in Korea came to Wuhan for the final presentation. All teams introduced their projects in a very professional way. The final presentation was hosted by Professor Liang Gao and Kevin Rong, the Co-Directors of HUST-WPI Senior Project Center in Mechanical Engineering. The participants include

Karen Xu and Liying Wang, Project sponsor: CIS Wuxi

Ronald Alciati, Project Sponsor: Nypro China

Al Barry, Project Sponsor: REM

Professors Young Kim and Choon Young Lee, from KNU, Daegue, Korea

Alex Wang from Saint Gibain Shanghai

Professors Jianzhong (John) Cha and Yiping Lu, Beijing Jiaotong University

Professor Zhihong Yang from Shandong University

Professor Zhao

Professors Zhikun Hou and Amy Zeng, WPI; and

Several professors from HUST

On the same day, a mini-symposium was held to discuss the innovation and globalization in engineering education. The following short presentations were made first,

Professor Xinyu Shao introduced the engineering education at HUST and future perspective.

Professor Cha introduced his perspective as a UNESCO chair

Mr. Al Barry presented on Project Management

Professor Zeng presented on Integrating Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Global Aspects into Undergraduate Curriculum at WPI

Professors Kim and Lee presented on globalization in Korea engineering education.

After the presentations, a lot of discussions were made on the need and best practice of innovation and globalization in higher education.

During the project time, the WPI students visited many places in China and Korea, including Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Wuxi, Changzou, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Three Gorges, in China and Seoul, Busan, and Daegu in Korea. Several students toured GM Shanghai Operations. All of them enjoyed the experience in China and Korea. For more details, please see the MQP in China web-site .

During this time, Professor Rong visited Southeastern University, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing University of Technology, Tsinghua University, Dalian University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai University, Shanghai Maritime University, South China University of Science and Technology, Guangdong Ocean University , Nanchang Aerospace Engineering University, Harbin University of Science and Technology, Inje University (Korea) in addition to HUST and KNU. At several universities, he gave presentations on Modeling and Simulation of Grinding Processes, Computer-aided Production Planning and Fixture Design, and Engineering Education at WPI. Professor Rong also visited the following companies besides all the project sponsoring companies,

Caterpillar China

UTC China

Bodycote China

Air Products China

Ipsen China

Harbin Turbine Power Plant

Saint Gobain Shanghai

PowerMax Shanghai

Lap Keung Precision Industrial Cooperation at Shenzhen

Next year, the program will be expanded to include the students in different majors (ME/MFE/IE/RBE/ECE/CEE) and working with the students from different universities of China and Korea and on different projects of MQP and IQP all sponsored by global companies and institutes.

Dr. Lei (Leo) Zhang will join SFTC at Columbus, OH, in July 2008, as a senior software engineer. Leo joined our CAM Lab. three years ago to be in charge of the continuation of the CHT technology development. He has co-founded a small business, JYL Solutions, as the Chief Technical Officer and successfully acquired the NSF STTR funding for improving the CHT furnace model and CHT technology commercialization. As a result of the project, SFTC may work with CHTE and JYL to make the CHT technology as part of their Deform product. Congratulation to Leo on his new professional career.

The “oldest” member of our CAM-Lab, Radha Purushothaman, has successfully defended his dissertation on Evaluation and Improvement of Heat Treatment Furnace Model, on Friday, June 6, 2008. Radha joined the CAM Lab in 2001 and graduated with his MS in Manufacturing Engineering in 2003, worked on a fixture design project. After working as a research associate for a year, he returned India for some industrial practice and came back WPI in 2005 to start his study toward a Ph. D in Manufacturing Engineering. Radha has worked with Caterpillar in Illinois for one and half years as a intern student before coming back in January this year to finish up his dissertation. He has worked as both TA and RA with us for years and will start working as a formal employee at Caterpillar in July 2008. Congratulations to Radha.

Hua Bai is working with Nypro at Clinton, MA as an intern student. She started the job on Monday, June 2, 2008 and expected to continue to the end of the year. She is working on supplier chain management related subjects.

The Center for Heat Treating Excellence (CHTE) at WPI held its first semi-annual meeting of 2008 on May 29, Thursday (Board meeting and dinner reception on May 28). Dr. Gang Wang presented his project on carburizing modeling and fatigue study. Professor Rong, Radha Purushothaman, Bose Xiao, and Dr. X. Chen also participated the meeting.

Professor Rong and Feng Jiang visited Saint Gobain at Worcester, MA in the afternoon of Wednesday, May 28, 2008. The recently developed Grinding Wheel Model was introduced and discussed.

Professor Rong, Dr. Lei Zhang, and Dr. Hui Wang visited Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT) at Hartford, CT on Wednesday, May 28, 2008. They learned CCAT’s operations and service to industry of the nation. They also introduced the research work at CAM Lab., particularly on Computer-aided Fixture design and Computerized Heat Treatment Modeling and Simulation. The possible collaboration was discussed.

On Tuesday, May 27, 2008, Puja Ghatpande has successfully defended her thesis on Simulation based Fixturing Accessibility Analysis, toward her MS in Mechanical Engineering. Congratulations to her.

WPI held its 140 th Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 17, 2008 ( http://www.wpi.edu/News/Releases/20078/commencement2008follo.html ). J effrey R. Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric Co. (GE) delivered the keynote address. After the ceremony, Jeff and other GE colleagues had a reception with WPI students who worked on GE MQP last year or who are going to work with GE for employment, summer intern, and MQP in next year, as well as their advisors. This year, GE hired more twenty WPI graduates and additional twenty plus for interns. The GE MQPs have been constantly received awards in Manufacturing Engineering Program at WPI in recent years.

After seven weeks studying at WPI, the nine exchange students from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China, departed back to China on Monday, May 12, 2008. They had chance to work on four projects with WPI students and professors, as well as engineers and shop operators in project sponsoring companies. They also had a lot of non-project activities, including sight-seeing at New York, Washington, DC, and California, visiting the homes of WPI students, participating fraternity house activities, and making friends with WPI students. It is believed that they have achieved the goal of doing senior projects in different environment and learning the US culture. They will continue the projects started here before their graduation in July 2008.

Professor Rong, together with 20 other WPI faculty members, participated a workshop on Innovation. They learned and practiced the five principles of innovation theory developed by Curtis Carlson, WPI alumnus and CEO of SRI. Carl and two other colleagues from SRI coached the WPI on four group projects of how to implement the innovation at WPI and how to make WPI unique and the best technological university. The innovation activities will be continued in the following academic year.

The students and professors in Manufacturing Engineering Program of WPI got together on May 1, 2008, to celebrate the completion of the academic year. Besides the undergraduate and graduate students, Professor Brown, Professor Fofana, and Professor Rong, as well as Toby and Brendan from the Lab participated. They enjoyed a slide show of Toby’s new baby, as well as the lunch and a lot of talking.

The HUST exchange student team makes the final presentation of their senior project at Amphenol TCS of Nashua, NH on Thursday, May 1, 2008. They were surprised by the comments made by the company colleagues (Mark Hilaire, Operations Manager, Scott Ziegenhagen, Engineering Director, and the shop operators). The production data collection, analysis, and the improvement suggestions were impressed by the company. The impact on the improvement of the production was beyond the student expectation. The benefit of student learning through the project was also discussed.

The MQP in China/Korea groups presented the PQP reports on Monday, April 27, 2008. The projects are sponsored by Nypro, Amphenol, CIS, REM and two Korean Companies (Hwashin and Pyenghwa). The final presentations of four projects sponsored by Nypro, Amphenol, and WPI were also made by HUST exchange students. Professor Rong and Professor Hou from ME WPI and Professor Zeng from Management, WPI attended the presentations. They are co-advisors of these projects.

Before the end of D term, the students going to China for their MQP got together at Campus Center in the evening of Friday, April 25, 2008, for a celebration of finishing D term PQP and the final preparation of traveling to China/Korea in summer for MQP. The exchange students from HUST joined them and all of them enjoyed BBQ cookout as well as a lot of talking.

Professor Rong, Xuekun (Chris) Li, and Wei Tian visited Saint Gobain at Worcester on Friday, April 18, 2008. They met with Dr. Subbu and Dr. Y. Tian to discuss the project progress and future plan.

The project leader of Amphenol TCS Changzhou Operations, Mr. Sky Wang, visited WPI during his short working assignment at ATCS Headquarter of Nashua, NH on April 17-18, 2008. ATCS has been sponsoring the MQP in China program in both US and China. Currently one group of exchange students from HUST are working on their senior projects with ATCS and another tam of WPI students, as well as their partners at HUST, are doing their PQP for their MQP which will be conducted in China in E term in the summer. Besides discussing with Professor Rong for the summer project at Changzhou, Sky met with the WPI team Clinton McAdams and Mike Pagonis, to introduce more details of the project and discussed their questions. William Tan from last year ATCS project team came to say hello to Sky. They worked together last summer in Changzhou. Sky also talked a lot with the HUST team at Nashua during the week.

Professor Lihua Dong from Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China, visited our CAM Lab on Wednesday, April 16, 2008. She met with Professor Rong and Professor Amy Zeng at Management Department. Common research topics were discussed.

Dr. Changsheng Guo from UTC, Paul Cotonoir from Becker College, Nick Cumani from Rohm and Haas, and Dr. Yinggang Tian from Saint Gobain, visited WPI during the project presentation day on April 15, 2008. Besides looking at student projects (some of them served as judges), they visited our CAM Lab and discussed on our research topics too.

WPI had its senior project (MQP) presentation on Tuesday, April 15, 2008. More than 400 students presented their projects on campus, including more than 40 projects presented by about 120 students in Mechanical Engineering Department. Many people from local companies visited WPI on that day. Some of them served as judges for student awards. Six teams from CAM Lab displayed their posters and showed their work to the visitors. Three projects were awarded by external judges.

Kevin Harrington and William Kurzmack received Mechanical Engineering Honorable Mention Award, on their p roject, Two Gait Walking Mobile Robot with Teleoperation over a Wireless Network

Richard Grossman Jr. and Natalie Senenfelder received Manufacturing Engineering MQP Award and Mechanical Engineering Honorable Mention Award, on their project, Lean Manufacturing of the Midframe Process, Sponsored by General Electric Aviation

Michael Demers, Ryan Lehrmitt, and Robert Pantalone received Manufacturing Engineering MQP Award, Mechanical Engineering Honorable Mention Award, and Best Senior Project Award from Society of Manufacturing Engineers Worcester Chapter, on their proj ect, High Efficiency Coolant Nozzle Design for Abrasive Wire Wafer Slicing, Sponsored by Saint-Gobain

Congratulations to the teams as well as their sponsors and thanks to judges.

Professor Rong was invited to the Senior Dinner of Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity House in the evening of Monday, April 14, 2008. About 40 students are living in the house in a very organized manner. Many faculty members and staff were invited to celebrate the coming graduation of their seniors. Congratulate the seniors for their accomplishment at WPI and wish them a bright future up coming.

Bowang (Bose) Xiao received the Norton Professorship in 2008-2009 academic year, for his excellence research work he has done and will be doing at WPI. Congratulations to Bose.

Eugeny Sosnovsky received the 2008 Salisbury Prize from WPI. This prize honors the senior student with the great faithfulness and excellence. Congratulations to Gene.

Eugeny Sosnovsky and Professor Rong attended the ASEE Zone 1 conference at West Point, NY on March 28 and 29, 2008. Gene is a senior student and was in our MQP in China 2007 team. He presented the MQP project on Design Process Development that he and Brad Windsor, together with partners from HUST, did for CIS, Wuxi, China. Brad was sick and unable to attend the conference. Professor Rong presented another paper on Extending the WPI Practice on Project based Education in the conference.

A new exchange student from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, Mr. Hu-jung Nam, arrived at WPI on Monday, March 24, 2008. He will study at our CAM Lab for six months. Welcome to Hu-jung.

Bowang (Bose) Xiao visited Oakland University and GM Powertrain in MI in the week of March 23-29. He did residual stress measurement to the test castings after air-quenching at OU and visited the quenching facility of GM engine blocks for acquiring production condition information which will be used in the future tests and simulation.

Hosted by the exchange students from HUST, the MQP in China group held its first formal social activity on Wednesday, March 19, 2008. Qi (Tom) Wang lectured the first lesson on Chinese language. This will be a weekly activity among the exchange students from HUST, the MQP in China groups of 2007 and 2008. The agenda includes the different dancing styles in China and China experience by Jeff Madden from 2007 team in the second week, and WPI Lib. resource utilization organized by Mike Fitzpatrick and China experience by Andy Anderson from 2007 team in the third week, in addition to the Chinese language learning.

The second WPI Graduate Research Achievement Day was held on Wednesday, March 19, 2008. 179 poster presentations were made, including seven from our CAM Lab. Professor Rong served as a judge in Engineering.

Professor Jianzhong Cha from Beijing Jiaotong University, Professor Arthur D’huys from University College Leuven and Professor Frank Docky from Leuven Institute of Technology visited us at WPI on March 16, Sunday, and March 18, Tuesday. They met with Professor Gretar Tryggvason, Head of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor Diran Apelian, Director of Metal Processing Institute, Professor Richard Sisson, Director of Manufacturing and Materials Engineering Program, and Professor Rong. The discussion was focused on the innovation of engineering education, particularly on the industrial projects and global experience in engineering curriculum. Possible collaboration among BJTU, Group T colleges, and WPI was explored. Professor Cha also serves as UN-ESCO Chair on Cooperation between Higher Engineering Education and Industries and a Board Director of Leuven Engineering School. Professor D’huys serves as the Vice President of Group T University College Leuven.

The first get together of the MQP in China 2008 group was help on Thursday, March 13, 2008. The WPI students going to China and Korea this year and the exchange students from HUST, China got together to know each other. Some of them will work together on the projects. Besides the project arrangement and travel preparation, several activities were planned. More news will be seen in the D term at WPI.

Professor Rong and Dr. Gang Wang participated the TMS Annual Meeting at New Orleans, LA, in March 11-13, 2008. Besides presenting two papers by Dr. Wang, they joined the dinner to honor Professor Diran Aplien as the new elected president of TMS. They also met with many friends there.

Professor Amy Zeng and Professor Rong visited Nypro, Clinton, MA, and Amphenol, Nashua, NH, respectively, with the senior project teams of WPI and HUST students, on Monday, March 10, 2008. This is the beginning of the MQP in China projects in 2008.

Radhakrishnan Purushothaman got engaged. His parents visited him and WPI, after meeting Radha’s fiancée’s family a while ago to “approve” the engagement. Congratulations to Radha.

Hua Li and Hui Wang spent a week at Caterpillar, Peoria, IL from March 2 to 8, 2008, working on a demonstration and on site testing of their new development of Computer-aided Modular Fixture Design System for Welding. Their work was highly recognized for the functions and practical application effectiveness. The research and development work will be continued toward more intelligent and robust. Thanks for their hard working and congratulate their achievement.

Six of nine exchange senior students from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China arrived WPI on Thursday, February 28, 2008. The other three will come in the next week to join them. They will work with WPI students and graduate students for their senior projects in next eight weeks. The project sponsors include Amphenol TCS, Nashua, NH, Nypro, Clinton, MA, and REM, Worcester, MA. This is part of the exchange program between HUST and WPI, together with the MQP in China program.

On February 27, WPI held a dinner in Higgins House to recognize the current recipients of 10 endowed professorships, including Professor Rong as the John W. Higgins Professor. President Daniel Berkey and Provost John Orr were the hosts and the representatives of the endowment donors participated the celebration. Provost Orr noted these professors are “ the faculty members who do so much to advance WPI's reputation through their scholarly endeavors and teaching talents, and to become better acquainted with the important role that endowed professorships play in helping the university recruit and retain such extraordinary talent”.

The exchange senior student from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, Hyoung-jun Lee, has finished his one-year study at WPI and went back KNU on February 26, 2008. He has studied on “computer-aided fixture design for part family” and enjoyed working on the topic. Hyoung-jun made a final presentation on Monday, February 25 and had lunch with Professor Rong and the WPI students who are going to KNU for summer senior projects (MQP) this year. All of the CAM Lab members enjoyed having Hyoung-jun stay with us and welcome him to visit back in the future. Best wishes to him on his finishing his BS study at KNU.

On WPI’s advising day of February 14, 2008, Professor Rong met with twelve of his advisees in their freshman, sophomore and junior years and helped them plan their next year of study.

Professor Qingyan Xu from Tsinghua University arrived at WPI on February 11, 2008. He will work with WPI’s Metal Processing Institute as a research scientist for a year, jointly sponsored by Tsinghua University/Chinese Government and MPI. Professor Xu is a friend of our CAM Lab and has visited WPI twice before. Welcome.

The students participating MQP in China program in 2008 had another get together on Tuesday, February 5, 2008. The project arrangement was further discussed and the project teams were almost finalized. The students participated last year in 2007 and exchange student from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, Mr. Hyoung-jun Lee, also joined us for discussion and enjoying the food. This year four WPI will go to Korea for two MQPs sponsored by Korean companies, in additional to about twelve WPI students going to China.

Feng Liu came back from Detroit, MI, after working at GM Powertrain for four weeks. He has been working on the project of Computer-aided Casting Systems Design.

Professor Amy Zeng and Professor Rong visited NSF and met with program directors on January 31, 2008. The possible expansion of the MQP in China program was discussed.

Professor Rong, along with Dr. Jingping Ge and Lei Zhang from JYL Solutions, visited Scientific Forming Technology Corporation at Columbus, OH on January 8, 2008. The collaboration among CHTE/WPI, SFTC, and JYL was discussed for the commercialization of the CHT technology and systems for modeling and simulation of heat treatment processes.

 

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