Shashank Priya, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering at Virginia Tech, and director of the Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems, a partnership between Virginia Tech and the University of Texas at Dallas, has received a five-year Turner Fellowship.
Virginia Tech's Board of Visitors approved the nomination, submitted by his mechanical engineering department's honorifics committee and endorsed by Ken Ball, the department head who holds the L.S. Randolph Professorship, and David Clark, professor and head of the materials science and engineering department.
Priya joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 2007 and immediately received an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award. He became a member of Virginia Tech's Center for Intelligent Materials Systems and Structures, and currently serves as its associate director.
In 2008, Priya received the Office of Naval Research Multi University Research Initiative Award titled "Jellyfish Autonomous Node and Colonies". This five-year program comprises of team members from Virginia Tech, Stanford University, University of Texas at Dallas, University of California at Log Angeles, and Providence College. Priya is leading this large team of researchers to develop fundamental understanding of jellyfish locomotion and to design unmanned vehicles based upon their findings.
In 2011, Priya and Nicholas Thayer, also at Virginia Tech, were credited with developing a human hand that is capable of performing human tasks. They called it a dexterous anthropomorphic robotic typing hand or DART. Its improvement over similar inventions is the speed with which it can perform a task like typing – capable of typing 20 words per minute – and its strong resemblance to a human hand.
"The greatest significance of this work, published in Smart Materials and Structures, is the optimization of the hand design to reduce the number of motors in order to achieve a similar degree of freedom and range of motion as the human hand," said Priya. "This allowed us to achieve dimensions that are on par with the human hand."
Priya's focus on energy harvesting allowed him to found the Annual Energy Harvesting Workshop series, focusing on critical subjects related to energy and wireless sensors. The seventh workshop in this series will be held at Virginia Tech on August 7 - 8, 2012. This year Priya has also founded the annual "Virginia Energy Summit" with focus on developing partnerships with industry and state and federal agencies to strengthen the role of Virginia in energy sector. The second Virginia Energy Summit will be held on January 29 - 30, 2013.
Since 2007, Priya has been the principal or co-principal investigator on research grants totaling more than $23 million. In addition to energy harvesting, Priya has made a strong impact in the field of high power piezoelectric ceramics and single crystals, magnetoelectric composites, lead-free piezoelectrics, high energy density materials, piezoresistive composites, and bio-inspired robotics. In last four years, he has authored over 75 journal publications covering these topics. Overall, he has authored over 170 journal publications.
"Overall, Dr. Priya has shown a strong aptitude for engineering, science, and education, as is evident from his publications, presentations, educational programs, and service. His performance over the past four years clearly shows his commitment to excellence and his strong thirst for knowledge. His long-term research goal is to make scientific and technological breakthroughs in the area of materials engineering applied to electromechanical devices," Ball said.
Priya received his bachelor's degree in math and physics from the Allahabad University of India in 1995. He received a master's degree in metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Science in 2000. He earned his doctorate in materials engineering from Penn State in 2003.
James and Elizabeth created the Turner Fellowships in 2011 with a $1 million gift, allowing two awards in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, each with a five-year renewable term. James Turner is a 1956 agricultural engineering alumnus who is the retired president and chief operating officer of General Dynamics. He is also a former rector of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
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