 Okay, we are ahead of schedule. When does that happen in academics? You know, it's like usually if you give professors a word they talk for hours, you know I mean come on. So it's my great pleasure to introduce Professor Fabio Sempalotti He arrived at Purdue in August of 2015 and was previously employed as an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame. We really don't count that you know, but that's okay. Originally from Italy Fabio obtained a combination of the typical European BS-MS degree like more diploma program in aerospace engineering from the University of Rome in 2000 and then completed father MS degree in error in 2002 from then until 2006 he held engineering positions in governmental and industrial entities connected to the aerospace industry and in 2006 he started his PhD studies at Penn State University and then completing it in 2009 and after completion as mentioned went Had a still still a little postdoc at Penn State, but then joined Notre Dame So since being here Since 2015 has been super active lots of publication Other activity research grants. I won't go through the list But I would like to mention that his main research areas and include wave propagation acoustic Metamaterials continue mechanics structural dynamics and their methods in differential equations He has been very active in the academic world with growing international recognition and Also quite a bit of service to the professional community So it's my great pleasure to have Fabio as part of this celebrating our associate Professors and I'm certainly happy that he's in ME. So thank you for being here Thank you Thanks, Saker for the generous introduction. So I will go I wanted to Give you a little bit of an idea of the past that brought me here, especially for Maybe the benefit of the students very often We are asked what is the path that would bring you to be a university professor or maybe a Researcher in academia. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to at least tell my side of the story So I when I finished my bachelor and master's degree at the University of Rome I definitely wanted out. I didn't want to be a professor. I never thought about being a professor I actually wanted to go to industry and wanted to see what that was about wanting to use what I had learned in In school on say more in a more practical applied environment And so I had an amazing opportunity as a first job. I was very passionate about Space application particularly the use of structures in in space And so I at the beginning I got a job as a consultant in a pretty large Consulting engineering companies and that was a great opportunity because I had the chance to experience many different projects And many different programs in a short amount of time So I worked on the Vega program and one of the two European launchers still structural side and even a short stint on satellite design Then I moved to Paris where I had this incredible opportunity to join the French space agency and For them I was working still as a structural engineer on the Ariane 5 the other the second European launcher So this brought me essentially 2006 and then I started thinking well this was great a great experience. I learned a lot, but I want to finish I want to further my education and so that's where I crossed the pond and arrived at Penn State Aerospace Where I did my PhD work now at that time What I was thinking is okay. I get my PhD then I go back to industry And maybe why not stay in the space industry in US, but this was before actually met these three outstanding gentlemen and and faculty members and on the last my advisors at at Smith at Penn State Aerospace, Conwell-Wang At the time at Penn State and me today Michigan and me and Steve Cullen at Penn State Applied Research Lab Who really opened my eyes to what research was about and what could have been a career In in the research field, then why not in in academia? So that really started tipping the scale in some sense towards you know from industry towards academia I did my research my mostly doctoral research in the area of structural health monitoring essentially Trying to find techniques That can tell you real-time is something is going wrong with the structure That's a very young version of myself when we were taking vibration measurements on Blackhawk helicopter When when I graduated I moved to as I was mentioning to Michigan for a one-year postdoc and then right after in 2011 I started as a faculty member At Noe Day in the mechanical and aerospace department and finally move here in in 2015 now if These three gentlemen have been very important to put me on this track There's a large group of people who are really instrumental to keep me on this track and these are my students and To the the title of today Gathering is celebrating associate professor. I would add and their students because without them We would be very hard to do what we do every day And so I was very fortunate as many of us here to have a very talented group of students very dedicated or at least they make me believe so and And so really this is my opportunity. They are almost all of them are here This is my opportunity to tell you thank you very much for what you do every day and for pushing the group for it So what do we do every day? Well the core Competencies in the group are essentially in the general area of dynamics of continuum and it basically hinges on this three Three topics continue mechanics structural dynamics and and wave propagation This basic knowledge we generally apply to mostly four areas or at least the areas in which we are mostly active these days Way propagation and multi physics dynamics is more kind of an umbrella area because a lot of the things that we develop Here actually benefit all these other These other areas and these other applications In in what we do in these areas mostly developing theoretical and numerical techniques for way propagation Mostly for elastic way propagation in solids, but we also look at their coupling with other physics or with other field like thermal Fluids Acoustics and some of these we do it with of course in collaboration with other faculty Professor Kristof Professor Scala Professor Marconi. They they we all have a very fruitful collaborations in in this area We also work in elastic metamaterials fractional mechanics structural health monitor I will tell you a little bit more in In the next few slides. So what is a meta material? Well the actual Translation is beyond the material. So it is essentially you can think of it as a composite is a material that we assemble and is a combination of Different material constituents with different shapes eventually placed in different orientation so to create an assembly that has very unique way propagation characteristics and so Within this area, of course, there are many subtopics and I'm not getting into into this It's just a snapshot of some of the activities we carried on in the last few years But really the bigger picture of this is why do we do this where we're mostly interested in thin solids? essentially those that are typical of lightweight structure think about aerospace systems and Of course, the the main role of these solids is to carry load is being structural materials structural solid But at the same time we're looking at the use of metamaterials as a way to make them sort of intrinsically smart in a way that the structure itself can also guide the energy that is flowing through it and Helping in managing vibration and noise control that this structure builds up in operating conditions in other area where we these days we are putting a lot of efforts and resources is Fractional order mechanics, which is essentially a combination of fractional calculus and essentially structural mechanics Fractional calculus in an area of applied mathematics. It's fairly developed that essentially deals with differential and integral operator of known in integer order. So as engineers, we are very used to First or a second-order derivative and their meaning in in our engineering field and applications fractional calculus deals with the question of A derivative of order one-half for instance and even push it further looking at derivatives of complex order and Variable order. So we look at very this very unique tool and Merged with we're not mathematicians. We're not developing new mathematical Models or in in fractional calculus, but we are looking at its application in our area and as I said particularly in structural mechanics one most more a natural connection of this Mathematical instrument to mechanics is in no local mechanics because that derivative is intrinsically no local But we found some very unique opportunities also in the area of homogenization In the area of fractional mechanics here. We are using the variable order version of this operator particularly here we're interested in looking at crack formation and Growth into a material and a very unique Capabilities of this tool is that of needing very small amount of information to really start predicting Where the crack will form and how will propagate? Now the recent area we looked into is in no linear dynamical systems so this is a recent study that we did looking at the Propagation of a dislocation into a kind of a lattice structure Under the the effect of external load, so we're looking essentially in this area at reformulating structural mechanics through the the the lens of this mathematical tool In the era of structural dynamics and health monitoring What we are doing is still looking for the most part that the most structure again those that have important application light weight structural design and we're mostly interested in sort of using geometric tapers and kind of indentation of different types to Control the way wave propagates through through the system and again application could be very different from vibration of noise control We looked into energy harvesting so extracting mechanical energy from the system and convert it into electrical electrical energy for low power type of application like ombar sensor and transducers some other applications here in creating embedded acoustic lenses to Direct the propagating waves in and mold the propagating waves in very specific ways in the structural health monitoring We're mostly interested these days in imaging techniques And so you can think of these as an x-ray or an MRI in the medical application But apply to structure so we we use Concept like vibration electrostatic response of the system to build an image of certain Material properties and so to understand if something is going bad with with the structure So I guess I use pretty much all my time, but Very briefly I teach in mechanics and dynamics For the most part as most of my colleagues. I try to be a good citizen and give back to my scientific community either in the editorships technical committees reviewer for Proposals or journals and also within my own department of course in in in different kind of in different kind of duties and With this I would like to thank again my entire group and of course my collaborators. This is not really a complete list. So I just is just a snapshot of that and Just a couple of words on my mentors. I had an incredible group of mentors Both and here at Purdue at a no-name as you all know tenure time is very challenging There are lots of things that are going on and so it's extremely important to have people you you trust and you can ask for for suggestion and to put you on the right track and And so a big thank to them as well and with this Thank you very much for being here today, and I'm happy to answer questions Thank you very much Fabio great contributions any questions for Fabio So What's in the store for you in the long run at Purdue? What do you want to do here? Well, I mean there are Several things in the making on the on the research side. So definitely that's probably now my main my main interest and You know working towards further in my my career and why not take an advantage of a sabbatical It's an outstanding idea I'm very supportive of that Any ambitions towards the administration like you know, there's some of us that like that stuff not everyone Well, I guess as I showed at the beginning everything is possible in life Right, I mean you start with a plan and you end up completely somewhere else. So Any other questions or in general Mark, do you want to take this back and close it out? Shall I close it out? Okay, well, I would like to thank All three speakers again for Presenting some of their research and activities at Purdue certainly a very exciting work being performed and In a great environment would like to thank the college for setting this up It's always a nice event and love the turnout today and with that. I Hope you have a great week