ME Students Michael Armani and Eric Shields Awarded ASME FACT Scholarships

Mechanical Engineering undergrad students Michael Armani and Eric Shields were awarded an ASME Fuels & Combustion Technologies (FACT) Division Student Scholarship.

With the scholarships, the FACT Division of ASME intends to encourage and promote the involvement and participation of young engineers in the society and its technical divisions.

Michael's accomplishments in the field of mechanical engineering revolve around gaining hands-on experience by doing research and working on many projects in his spare time. So far, he has made significant advances towards fully understanding combustion regimes in a Kerosene Spray Flame, which is a powerful facility that enables researchers to reduce pollutants. Furthermore, he has been working towards creating a non-invasive particle control system by means of a computational fluid dynamics model.

Michael has invested a lot of time and energy into learning basic MEMS fabrication techniques in the clean room. He also has been working on optimizing a two-stroke engine mounted to a mountain bike.

Michael has many future plans and interests aside from research. One of his recent accomplishments includes participating in the DARPA Grand Challenge, an automated robotics competition with a 200 mile path. He is also interested in inspiring students to pick up undergraduate research positions; to do so, he has been leading a section of the Honor 200 research colloquium at the University of Maryland, and will continue to do so in the coming years. His ultimate plans include studying biomechanical engineering in grad school, and becoming a professor in the field.

Published May 15, 2004