About the MechE Alliance Seminar Series
The MechE Alliance Seminar Series is a platform for connecting members of the MechE community, including current students, post-docs and faculty at MIT MechE, our alumni, industry and other external partners. Research thrives on sharing ideas and discoveries. Through these seminars, we support the free-flow of ideas and the networks of researchers that make up the global MechE community.
Seminars will rotate between talks from MIT MechE Faculty, Students and Postdocs, and our alumni and other partners. Topic are as varied as our research with focus areas being in mechanics, controls, instrumentation, & robotics, ocean science & engineering, micro & nano engineering, design & manufacturing, energy science & engineering, and bioengineering.
View recordings of past seminars as well as other videos from around MIT MechE at our MechE Alliance YouTube Channel.
Sponsored by MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Next MechE Alliance Seminar
Mission Systems Engineering of the James Webb Space Telescope
Wednesday December 2, 2020
12:00-12:45pm US EDT
Zoom Webinar Link:
https://mit.zoom.us/j/95934900225
Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), on schedule to launch in 2021, will be NASA’s successor mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST has been designed and developed to observe “first light” objects in the nascent universe, the evolution of galaxies over cosmic history, star birth within our own galaxy, planet formation and evolution both in our solar system and in solar systems around other stars and to make observations of the recently exoplanets. The JWST telescope will have an aperture greater than 6 meters in diameter, and along with its compliment of science instruments must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures below 50K. It will be operated at the Sun-Earth L2 point to keep thermal sources such as the Sun and Earth in the same general direction so that their radiation can be shielded by a “tennis court sized” sunshield, allowing the payload to attain these temperatures passively. This presentation will give an overview of the JWST science and systems design from the perspective of the NASA Mission Systems Engineer. The presentation will describe some of the key engineering challenges the Project has addressed to produce this “first of its kind” mission.
Speaker

About Mike Menzel '81
Michael Menzel has 39 years of experience in the aerospace, working 23 years in industry for commercial and defense missions and for NASA for the past 16 years. He is currently the Mission Systems Engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope. Mr. Menzel received a B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and an M.S. in Physics from Columbia University in 1986.
Past MechE Alliance Seminars
-
Impact of COVID-19 on the US Fuel and Electricity Demand
Dr. Weiqi Ji, MechE
Wednesday November 18, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfmIGGClXIs -
High-fidelity flow simulations for bio-inspired underwater devices.
Dr. Wim M. van Rees, MechE
Wednesday November 4, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR525QI2ttY -
Versatile High-Speed and Large-Range Atomic Force Microscope Design.
Dr. Fangzhou Xia, MechE
Wednesday October 28, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdGNcis9Huk&feature=youtu.be -
Towards 3D Architected Materials Beyond the Laboratory engineering.
Dr. Carlos Portela, MechE
Wednesday October 21, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hqvytn4Fyo -
MechE-charmed reality: metaphors and insights between mechanical and software engineering.
Mitch Kelley ’11
Wednesday October 14, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAvuQM7bBU8&t=4s -
Toward more natural human-computer interaction.
Professor Randall Davis, MIT CSAIL
Wednesday October 7, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLiXv0Zm55Q -
Automated Discovery of High-Quality Novel Designs.
Dr.Faed Ahmed, MIT MechE
Wednesday September 30, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woHWiQVHMnA&t=4s -
Meeting (& preventing) new challenges in bio(chemical) sensing.
Dr.Svetlana Boriskina, MIT MechE
Wednesday September 23, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kQVa7G415s&t=13s -
A worker-centered approach to convex optimization in engineering design.
Edward Burnell, PhD candidate, MIT MechE
Wednesday September 16, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhYbhFH3F-Q&t=50s -
Manufacturing Principles: Theory, Research and Practice.
Prof. David Hardt, Industry Co-Director Jose Pacheco, Dr. Brian Anthony and Arjun Chandar
Wednesday September 9, 2020
https://youtu.be/qOaDt7uZKVA -
Cybersecurity and Data Trustworthiness in Connected and Automated Vehicles.
Dajiang Suo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Wednesday August 4th, 2020
https://youtu.be/UkRyRmgGNmc -
Rethinking Problems in Thermal Science and Engineering - From Atoms to Applications.
Dr. Asegun Henry, an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Wednesday July 29, 2020
https://youtu.be/zURRKVJYv9Q -
A Tale of Two Singularities --Exotic phenomena and energy applications induced by topological singularities in a Weyl semimetal.
Mingda Li, Norman C. Rasmussen Assistant Professor at MIT Nuclear Science and Engineering Department
Wednesday July 22, 2020
https://youtu.be/zURRKVJYv9Q -
Scalable Visible Light Additive (Bio)fabrication.
Kavin Kowsari, Postdoctoral Fellow , MIT MechE
Wednesday July 15, 2020
https://youtu.be/ZCKIevPXNfs -
Birth and death of a single quantum of vibration.
Vivishek Sudhir, Assistant Professor, MIT MechE
Wednesday July 8, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvgzcHpoUP8&t=233s - Bringing Science and Engineering to Safety.
Albert Moussa, President, Blazetech
Wednesday July 1, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ_er5s-ERc&t=3s - 3D Organ Property Mapping Using Freehand Ultrasound Scans .
Alex Benjamin, MechE, PhD Candidate
Wednesday June 24, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRAUmRYTXE&t=66s - FiA World Rally Cup and autonomous vehicle technology is speeding the way to safer urban mobility.
Edward Bernardon, VP Strategic Automotive Initiatives at Siemens Specialized Engineering Software
Wednesday June 18, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-Bzosmwcl0&t=14s - GI Device Development in a few Movements.
Dr. Giovanni Traverso, Assistant Professor at Mechanical Engineering Department, MIT
Wednesday June 17, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4B9FN0_cXc&t=10s - Sustainability and Summer Learning Opportunities at Danfoss.
Mark Shu DCs, Innovation Director, The Danfoss Innovation Accelerator, Cambridge, MA
Wednesday June 3, 2020
https://youtu.be/8IBeb5-1gSw - Nimble Acoustic Assembly of Organized Multi-Material Extrusion Processes.
Lauren Chai, PhD Candidate, Computational Instrumentation and Device Realization Lab.
Wednesday May 13, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS2bGaFtUyw&t=12s - Integrating organic components with synthetic soft robots; a paradigm shift for preclinical testing of implantable devices.
Assistant Professor Ellen Roche, MIT MechE and IMES, W.M. Keck Foundation Career Development Professor.
Wednesday May 6, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpGwxoBRKdw&t=1459s - Ultrahigh-efficiency desalination via a thermally-localized multistage solar still
Lenan Zhang, PhD Candidate, Device Research Lab, MIT MechE
Thursday April 23, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYodKQP72mg&t=355s - Manipulating Light and Color with Soft and Structured Matter
Prof. Mathias Kolle, Rockwell Career Development Professorship, Associate Professor, MIT MechE
Wednesday April 15, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqrkEy7nr4I&t=1640s
Contact Us
For questions, please email me-alliance@mit.edu.
MechE students, postdocs, faculty, and alumni are encouraged to reach out if you would like to present as part of this series.