There were four PhD graduates from MRL in 2006, who have joined major corporations in research capacity.  Dr. Yajun Fan is now a Senior Project Engineer with Caterpillar.  Dr. Youneng Wang works for Michelin Research and Dr. Jennifer Zhang works for Westinghouse.  Dr. Xi Long is a Senior Software Engineer with Amazon.com.

Dr. Yao and his former doctoral student, Dr. Wenwu Zhang (currently GE Global Research), together with Cevdet Noyan from department of applied physics and applied mathematics of Columbia University have won the prestigious Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Award from ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineering) for their two-part paper "Microscale Laser Shock Peening of Thin Films."  Presentation was given on October 16, 2006 in Yipsilanti, MI during the MSEC conference (Photo).

Dr. Yao was elected an ASME Fellow (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). This was announced at the MSEC conference in Yipsilanti, MI in October 2006. Earlier this year Dr. Yao was inducted as a Fellow of Laser Institute of America.

Dr. Yao was invited to give a presentation at NSF I/U CRC Center of Lasers and Plasmas for Advanced Manufacturing, November 28-29, 2005 in Ann Arbor, MI.

Dr. Peng Cheng has successfully defended his doctoral thesis in laser forming in Oct. 2005 under Dr. Yao's supervision.  In October, he has joined Schlumberger in Houston, TX.

Dr. Yao has been elected Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Columbia University and his term has started on July 1, 2005. 

Dr. Hongqiang Chen, currently with Quantronix Lasers, attended the Ph.D. Convocation in St. Paul's Chapel May 2005.  He was greeted by his doctoral advisor, Dr. Yao (Photo).

Columbia University hosted the 33rd North American Manufacturing Research Conference May 24-27, 2005.  Drs. Yao and Longman served as Co-Chairs and graduate students from MRL and Prof. Longman's group helped organize the event.  Michael Idelchik of GE Global Research gave the keynote speech. 

Dr. Yao was invited to give a keynote speech “Laser Forming of Complex Structures” at International Workshop on Thermal Forming, Bremen, Germany, April 13-14, 2005.  His co-worker under the NIST APT program, Dr. Dave Mika of GE Global Research also attended the Workshop.  It was hosted by Prof. Frank Vollertsen, Director of BIAS.

Dr. Yao served as the Program Chair for the MED (Manufacturing Engineering Division) at IMECE 04 held in Anaheim, CA during Nov. 13 to 19.  Two papers "Experimental characterization and simulation of three dimensional plastic deformation induced by microscale laser shock peening" and "Effective Automatic Recognition of Cultured Cells in Bright Field Images Using Fisher’s Linear Discriminant Preprocessing" were presented.

Dr. Yao was elected a Fellow of the Laser Institute of America.  A plaque was presented during ICALEO '04 held Oct. 04 in San Francisco by LIA President, Bill Lawson (Photo).

In September 2004, three new graduate students joined MRL.  Andrew Birnbaum started his doctoral program here and he has a MS from Carnegie Mellon University.  Sinisa Vukelic started his MS leading to PhD program here and he has a BS from University of Belgrade.  Yishu Cao started his MS program here and he has a BS from Nanjing University, China.

National Science Foundation has awarded a three-year grant beginning June 2004 to support MRL's work on laser forming. Dr. Yao serves as Principal Investigator.

Hong Q. Chen successfully defended his doctoral thesis on Micro Scale Laser Shock Peening in May 2004 under Dr. Yao's supervision.  In July, Dr. Chen joined Quantronix Lasers in Long Island, NY as a staff engineer.  Quantronix was founded in 1967 and is a pioneer in laser technologies especially in CW pumped Q-switched solid-state lasers and ultrafast lasers.

MRL members and collaborators gathered at the faculty house to celebrate the end of year 2003. (Photo)

Dr. Yao, and doctoral student Peng Cheng represented Columbia at the NIST project annual meeting in Kansas City, MO during December 15-16, 2003. The technical and business managers from NIST for the project attended the meeting and all partners presented work accomplished during the last year.

Dr. Yao and doctoral student Hongqiang Chen attended the ICALEO '03 (International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics) in Jacksonville, FL during Oct 13-16, 2003. Two papers "The Influence of Sheet Metal Anisotropy on Laser Forming Process" and "Spatially Resolved Characterization of Residual Stress Induced by Micro Scale Laser Shock Peening" were presented. Dr. Yao also attended the meeting of LIA Board of Directors.

The paper titled "Spatially Resolved Characterization of Residual Stress Induced by Micro Scale Laser Shock Peening" co-authored by Hongqiang Chen, Y. Lawrence Yao and J. W., Kysar presented at ICALEO '03 has won the first place award in Student Paper Award Contest.

Doctoral student Hongqiang Chen represented Columbia University at the NSF Engineering & Computing Education Grantee Meeting 2003, Washington, DC in September 2003 and hosted a poster presentation. He also participated in a focused group discussion on future research and education needs, and spoke specifically on non-traditional machining.

Dr. Yao, and doctoral student Peng Cheng represented Columbia at the NIST project quarterly meeting in Denver, CO during September 4-5, 2003.

Three new doctoral students joined MRL in Septemper, 2003. They are Yajun Fan, Youneng Wang and Jie Zhang. Before joining MRL, Yanjun studied at Pennsylvania State University and Youneng was a MS student in University of Michigan. Jie worked as a research assistant in the Medical School of Columbia University. A new masters student, Yuki Saito, has also joined MRL.

Dr. Yao attended the Laser in Manufacturing 2003 Conference in Munich, Germany in June 2003. He presented a paper "Process design of laser forming for three dimensional thin plates" and had meaningful discussions with German colleagues. He was also invited to visit a number of institutions involved in laser materials processing research and development including renowned Fraunhofer IPT (Institute of Production Technologies) in Aachen, Germany.

Doctoral student Hongqiang Chen presented an invited talk "Thermal Aspects in Laser Material Removal" in the NSF Workshop on Research Needs in Thermal Aspects of Material Removal Processes, Stillwater, OK in June 2003. He also participated in group discussions on future research needs.

A Kickoff meeting of the NIST project (see below) was held in GE Global Research at Schenectady, NY December 4, 2002 and was attended by NIST project managers and all partners.  Dr. Yao, and doctoral students Chao Liu and Peng Cheng represented Columbia at the meeting.  NIST requirements were reviewed.  History, vision and the first year milestones were also reviewed.

NIST ATP (National Institute of Standards and Technologies, Advanced Technology Program) has recently made an award to a consortium consisting of GE Global Research at Schenectady, NY, Caterpillar Tech Center in Peoria, IL, Columbia University, and two more companies to conduct a project “Laser Forming of Complex Structures.”  The total project cost is $7M with $3.5M from NIST and the rest from the partners.  Columbia’s portion of the project cost is $1.2M and Dr. Yao serves as the Columbia PI.