In The News
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The ME Graduate Group End-of-Year celebration was a huge success this year!
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Michelle won second place in the UC Merced campus-wide GradSlam Finals. As the only engineering student in the top three, she represented our research group, Mechanical Engineering and the School of Engineering overall!
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Five students from our group competed in the UC Merced GradSlam this year. All of them did a great job promoting tribology and their research. Also, Michelle was selected to compete in the Finals for the chance to represent UC Merced in the UC-wide championships. She is the first ME student to ever make the Finals!
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Three students from our research group are doing internships at NASA this summer: Robert Martin at NASA Glenn, Michelle Len at NASA Langley and Nick Walters at Jet Propulsion Lab.
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Professor Martini was quoted in a recent article about California road roughness in the Sacramento Bee: You’re paying for America’s smoothest roads. Can you tell?.
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Our recent paper describing the effect of roughness on the nanoscale friction of 2D materials was featured at Kaleidoscope by Physical Review B: PRB Kaleidoscope September 2017.
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Professor Martini was quoted in a recent article on the retirement of Purdue's Carter computer cluster: Retired Carter Cluster was Nation’s Fastest Campus Supercomputer.
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Professor Martini's new class, Design Thinking, was highlighted by UC Merced's University News: New Class Designed to Teach Students to Think Like Engineers.
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The Mechanical Engineering program at UC Merced has a new accreditation for its MS and PhD degrees. The full story is available on UC Merced's University News: Mechanical Engineering Now an Officially Accredited Graduate Degree.
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Uma and Shelly's 3rd place in the BASF Science Competition was featured on the UC Merced Graduate Division website: Engineering Graduate Students Place Third In Major Industry Competition.
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The Martini group's collaboration with Chevron was the topic of a Merced Sun Star article: UC Merced Connect: Chevron partnership creates opportunities, and reported on the UC Merced University News site: Engineering Professor and Students Team Up with Chevron.
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Some photos of group members in the lab were featured in a Merced Sun Star article about the first decade of UC Merced.
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A new Physical Review Letters article by Justin Ye and Professor Martini (and others) was highlighted on the U Penn news website, on the UC Merced news website, and in a Merced Sun Star newspaper article.
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Sean Lantz and Professor Martini were interviewed about their engineering capstone design project in a recent article in the Merced Sun Star newspaper and a short video shown on PBS in Sacramento (KVIE).
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Justin's recent award from the Northern California Section of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers was featured on the UC Merced Engineering website: Click here to see the article.
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Our recent paper on the ultimate properties of cellulose nanocrystals was featured on the cover of the August 2014 issue of Cellulose, Volume 21 Issue 4.
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Justin Ye's image entitled "Electric contact at the nanoscale" won third place at the American Vacuum Society's 60th International Symposium and Exhibition Art Zone Contest. The image was generated in collaboration with Min Hwan Lee and Hyeongjoo Moon at UC Merced. The caption is "This image illustrates the electric contact between an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) tip and graphite substrate. It integrates a Scanning Electron Microscope image of the AFM tip (30 nm in radius) with a snapshot from a molecular dynamics simulation of the nanoscale contact; the current between them is represented conceptually."
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Our work on friction of hydrogenated graphene was featured on Nanotechweb's Lab Talk, Sept 26 2013.
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Our work on atomic friction at graphene step edges was featured on the cover of the August 2013 issue of APL, Volume 103 Issue 8.
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Our review paper on atomic-scale friction was featured on the cover of the May 2013 issue of JVSTA, Volume 31 Issue 3.
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The group's recent review paper on atomic-scale friction was the most downloaded JVSTA article in March and April 2013.
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Check out the recent special issue of Tribology Letters highlighting collaborations in tribology between experiment-focused and theory-focused research groups with a preface written by Professor Martini. Access the special issue here.
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An online article about Justin Ye was posted on the UC Merced news site. View article here.
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Professor Martini was a Featured Member on the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers webpage STLE Member Highlight.
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We have made freely available several online simulation tools via the nanoHUB. Check them out!
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The Atomic Stick-Slip Toolkit enables you to easily perform non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of the atomic stick-slip that occurs between an atomic force microscope tip and substrate, and then analyze their simulation results quantitatively.
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The Forced Protein Unfolding simulation tool allow you to easily perform non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of a protein subject to an external force and then analyze their simulation results both quantitatively and through animations of the protein dynamics.
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The Protein Contact Maps tool lets you quickly and easily generate contact maps and distance maps for protein molecules. Input may be given in one of two ways: If an RCSB Protein Data Bank identifier is given, the tool will automatically retrieve the structure from www.pdb.org. The user may also upload their own .pdb file. If a file is given which contains multiple models representing a trajectory, then the results will be shown as a sequence of plots.
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The Frenkel-Kontarova Model tool lets you simulate the movement of simple liquid molecules over a 2D potential energy landscape due to external forcing using the Frenkel-Kontarova model. Users can specify the molecule, surface and forcing conditions, and then analyze the predicted molecular movement, energetics, and slip behavior of the system.
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The Atomic Stick-Slip Toolkit enables you to easily perform non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of the atomic stick-slip that occurs between an atomic force microscope tip and substrate, and then analyze their simulation results quantitatively.
December 2023: An article about group member Sam Leventini's new opportunity to teach at CSU Northridge next semester was promoted on the UC Merced news page.
July 2023: The group contributed to a paper published in the journal Science that was highlighted in a recent: UC Merced news article.
April 2023: Three of our team members, Fakhrul, Rossi, and Abhishek, made it to the campus finals of the 2023 GradSlam competition and did a fantastic job of presenting their research to a general audience in three minutes or less!
December 2022: Group alum Duval Johnson, Ph.D. was the Keynote Speaker for the University of California, Merced inaugural graduate student commencement. Check out his incredibly inspiring speech here.
December 2022: One of the two Oustanding Students from Mechanical Engineering for Fall 2022, Michelle Padilla, is an undergraduate researchers in our group!
April 2022: The two Oustanding Students from Mechanical Engineering for Spring 2022, Daniel Miliate and Colin Cox, are both undergraduate researchers in our group!
February 2022: Fakrhul was awarded the 2022 Society of Lubrication Engineers Northern California Section Research Scholarship.
November 2021: We were interviewed about slipperiness and the importance of tribology for BBC's science podcast The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry in an episode called The Slippery Situation.
November 2021: One of our undergrad researchers Tanner Ragan was selected as the UC Merced School of Engineering Outstanding Student for the class of fall 2021.
November 2021: Some of our team members are volunteering for Early Family Math by translating fun family math activities into Chinese and Spanish. The connection between University of California, Merced and EFM was highlighted (with a quote from Quanpeng Yang) in a recent: UC Merced news article.
November 2021: UC Merced and research group alumnus Dr. Duval Johnson of Jet Propulsion Lab came back to campus to talk to the undergrad Tribology class about space mechanisms and lubricants, and of course tour the lab and visit with the group.
October 2021: We had an opportunity to talk about fluid power in higher education via National Fluid Power Association's Fluid Power Forum.
October 2021: An innovative engineering solution developed by students at UC Merced was featured on ABC 30 Fresno news.
October 2021: Our small contribution to the Mars rover project was highlighted in an article in Northwestern Magazine (Professor Martini's alma mater) entitled So Far Yet So Close, "Northwestern faculty and alumni are providing their expertise to get humans safely to Mars".
July 2021: Professor Martini was interviewed on the YouTube channel Lubrication Explained for an epsiode called How to Engage People with Tribology and Lubrication.
July 2021: Highlights from Professor Martini's podcast interview with Fuels and Lubes was published in the Quarter Two 2021 F+L Magazine in the article The Trouble with Tribology.
July 2021: Our paper Solid Lubrication with MoS2: A Review was selected for the 2021 Best Paper Award by the journal Lubricants.
June 2021: Our new paper on electric motor greases was just highlighted on tribonet: Finding the best lubricant for an electric vehicle.
June 2021: Daniel and Samuel's new paper on electric motor greases was highlighted on the cover of the journal Lubricants. The cool photo of greased bearings was taken by friend-of-the-lab Greg Morris at Shell.
June 2021: A figure created by Arash was used in the cover story entitled "Progress in tribological molecular simulations" in the latest edition of STLE's TLT Magazine.
May 2021: UC Merced faculty awardees were announced, including Professor Martini, as highlighted on the UC Merced news page.
May 2021: We promoted tribology and STEM in a recent episode of CBS Mission Unstoppable.
May 2021: We made our TikTok debut with a short clip about lubricants in space as part of a promotion of Space Day by CBS Mission Unstoppable.
April 2021: A figure created by Mohammad was used in the cover story about MoS2 in the latest edition of STLE's TLT Magazine.
April 2021: Professor Martini talks about the importance and future of tribology in an F+L Podcast.
February 2021: Azhar was featured on ABC Fresno News for his work with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Mars rover. There are also cameo appearances by some of the other group members attending our zoom Mars rover landing watch party.
January 2021: Our paper "Nanoscale Friction Behavior of Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides: Role of the Chalcogenide" was highlighted at Penn Engineering Today.
December 2020: Our paper "Critical Shear Rate of Polymer-Enhanced Hydraulic Fluids" was highlighted on the cover of the recent issue of the journal Lubricants.
August 2020: We contributed to an NSF proposal that was recently selected for funding that will enable UC Merced to double its supercomputing power. The new grant was highlighted on the UC Merced news page.
August 2020: Our recently published paper in Nanoscale Advances was showcased by Nanosensors in their latest Science and Technology highlights.
August 2020: Our group is part of a new NSF-funded, multi-university Center for Chemical Innovation focused on the study of mechanochemistry called the Center for Mechanical Control of Chemistry. The new Center was highlighted on the UC Merced news page.
August 2020: The Mars 2020 project and the contributions of Azhar and Duval were highlighted as the front page story on the Merced Sun Star newspaper.
Article here.
July 2020: Our contribution to the Mars 2020 project was highlighed on the nightly Sacramento (KCRA 3) and Fresno (ABC 30) news on the day of the mission launch: KCRA 3 News and
ABC 30 News.
July 2020: Our work with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab is contributing to the Mars 2020 mission through which the 'Perseverance' rover will search for signs of ancient life on Mars. The project and the collaboration between Azhar and Martini Group alumnus Duval, now at JPL, were highlighted in an article on the UC Merced news page as well as a video on YouTube.
July 2020: Our group is part of Merced nAnomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing (MACES) — UC Merced’s NASA funded center for nanomaterials-based research and education — that just received a two-year, $1.8 million renewal. The renewal was highlighted on the UC Merced news page.
June 2020: Our new project on "green" ionic liquid lubricants, in collaboration with U Nevada Reno and Nanotech, will be supported by an NSF GOALI grant. The project was highlighted on the UC Merced news page.
June 2020: Current and former students (Monica, Daniel, Mike and Duval) have been working with Chevron for five years to create a new test rig for characterizing varnish removal. Their efforts contributed to development of a new product. Here's a demo on YouTube.
June 2020: Four students participated in the Web Seminar Series on Tribology's Twitter Poster Conference. Azhar and Sam won 1st and 3rd place in the competition.
May 2020: A recent article in Fuels + Lubes Magazine entitled "Electric vehicle greases - an unclear future" includes interviews with Daniel and Professor Martini.
Article Here.
April 2020: The group is using Teams now as our main communication tool and Professor Martini was recently asked to describe how it can improve efficiency. Check it out on YouTube.
April 2020: An online article was just published on the UC Merced news site about our study of the friction of apples. This is a great example of how tribology is important in everyday life!
Article Here.
November 2019:Our paper published in Science Advances (Chen et al. Sci. Adv. 2019, 5, 8) was highlighted in an article "Origins of Friction" on Tribonet.
August 2019: Our study reporting a head-to-head comparison of friction on graphene vs. MoS2 (Vazirisereshk et al. Nano Letters, 2019, 19, 5496) was highlighted as a featured article on Tribonet.
July 2019: Our recent review paper on MoS2 as a solid lubricant (Vazirisereshk et al. Lubricants, 2019, 7, 57) was featured on the cover of the journal Lubricants, Volume 7, Issue 7.
May/August 2019: Nick and Mike successfully obtained their MS degrees and both accepted positions with Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Congrats to both!
March 2019: Five students from our group competed in the UC Merced GradSlam this year. All of them were oustanding and Karen was selected to compete in the campus finals round.
August 2018: UC Merced's NASA sponsored MACES center was featured in a short video on YouTube, including some comments from Professor Martini: UC Merced MACES – Changing What’s Possible.
July 2018: Sal Angrisani made a COOL VIDEO about tribology and the Martini Research Group at UC Merced. Check it out on YouTube!
July 2018: Professor Martini was quoted in a recent article in the MRS Bulletin: Sculpting a silicon wafer surface one atom at a time
May 2018: Duval graduated and Dr. Johnson accepted a position at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. Congrats!