Merrett Chosen for MF3 Award

4/8/2013 Written by Susan Mumm

The College of Engineering has presented AE doctoral student Craig G. Merrett with a Mavis Future Faculty Fellows (MF3) Award.

Written by Written by Susan Mumm

AE doctoral student Craig G. Merrett
AE doctoral student Craig G. Merrett
AE doctoral student Craig G. Merrett
The College of Engineering has presented AE doctoral student Craig G. Merrett with a Mavis Future Faculty Fellows (MF3) Award.

MF3’s purpose is to facilitate the training of the next generation of top engineering professors. The program’s three main components are research, teaching and mentoring. Students in the program train to become proficient in these areas, and also select a capstone experience.

Merrett said his work in the program involved participating in a number of professional development activities, and taking the course, EOL 585: College Teaching and Academic Careers. The development activities included a Penn State workshop on improving presentation styles and a proposal-writing seminar. Merrett said the EOL 585 course was particularly useful because of the breadth and depth of topics covered, including active learning techniques, instructional methods, and an introduction to the scholarship of teaching and learning.

“Overall I’ve found the experiences from the workshops and the course to be rewarding, and very helpful preparation for a career in academia,” he said.

Advised by AE Prof. Emeritus Harry H. Hilton, Merrett has been working on aero-servo-viscoelasticity theory for plates for his PhD research.

Aero-servo-viscoelasticity is the intersection of aeroelasticity with viscoelastic materials and servo-controls. Merrett’s current work concerns the theory for flutter and divergence boundaries of an aero-viscoelastic plate and the effect of chordwise and unsymmetrical bending for a lifting-surface. The work will be combined later with servo controls to find the combination of controls, aerodynamics, and structural properties that improve the performance of a plate or a wing in air flow. Funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the work has applications in morphing unmanned aerial vehicles and optimized aircraft designs.


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This story was published April 8, 2013.