PHD student Maijie Xiang has joined the group. Maijie comes to us from Boston University, where he completed his MS in Materials Science and Engineering, working on photo-acoustics in Prof. Chen Yang’s group. Maijie will be working on MEMS vibroacoustic sensors at Tufts.

The Tufts sonic anemometer flew to 122,000 feet over New Mexico on August 18, 2023. We spent 2 hours at float altitude. Total flight time was 5 hrs. 11 minutes. Many thanks to NASA Balloon Programs Office and Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility for providing the opportunity to fly! Data will be returning soon for processing.

This July the group delivered a high altitude sonic anemometry system to NASA Wallops Flight Center for integration into a high altitude balloon platform. The system is the latest update to the Tufts Sonic Anemometer and will provide three dimensional relative wind measurements and speed of sound measurements at a rate of just over 4 samples/second. Speed resolution is approximately 10 cm/s. The system will also log infrasound, pressure, temperature, GPS location, and orientation (9 DOF IMU) throughout the flight.

Summer students Zarina Kosherbayeva and Ben Fisher will be working the lab this summer on undergraduate research projects related to high altitude balloon instrumentation. Welcome to the lab!

Prof. White presented an invited talk on MEMS instrumentation for wind tunnel and aerodynamics measurements at Nanotech 2023 (TechConnect 2023) in New Harbor, Maryland on June 21.

Prof. White was inducted as a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America on May 10, 2023. “For advancement in the field of acoustic micro-electro-mechanical systems.”

Prof. White presented two papers as the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Chicago.

Robert D. White, Aidan Beckett, Rishabh Chaudhary, Luisa Chiesa, Amish Desai, Odin Doolittle, Michael Emerling, Peter Moore, Makoto Takayasu, and Boning Zhang, “MEMS Microphone Arrays for Quench Detection in Superconducting Cables” in the 184^th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Chicago, IL, May 9 2023.

Robert D. White, Don Banfield, Rishabh Chaudhary, Timothy Cheng, Anthony Colaprete, Amanda Cook, Tara Curran, Arwen Dave, Julia Huckaby, Ian Neeson, Emmett Quigley, Abraham Rademacher, Freidlay Steve, and Bruce White, “A Martian Sonic Anemometer” in the 184^th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Chicago, IL, May 11 2023.

April 28, 2023. Peter Moore presented our work on Cryogenic MEMS microphones for superconductor quench detection at IDSM’03 in Salerno, Italy.

Peter Moore, M. Takayasu, L. Chiesa, R. White, M. Emerling, and A. Desai, “MEMS Microphones for Quench Detection in Fusion Cables” presented at the 2nd Workshop on Instrumentation and Diagnostics for Superconducting Magnets (IDSM’03), Salerno, Italy, April 28, 2023.

April 28, 2023 Olive Rappoli and Tim Cheng both successfully defended their Masters of Science Theses today! Congratulations! Tim will be continuing on for a PHD at Tufts, and Olive will be returning to full time work at Draper.

Olive Rappoli, “Characterization of a MEMS Electric Field Sensor” Masters of Science Thesis, defended April 28, 2023. 

Tim J. Cheng, “A High-Altitude Digital Sonic Anemometer: Development and Deployment” Masters of Science Thesis, defended April 28, 2023. 

Our paper on acoustic quench detection for cryogenic superconducting magnets published in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity:

P. Moore, B. Isaacson, J. D’Alessandro, F. Alquaddoomi, Z. Zhao, O. Doolittle, B. Zhang, A. Beckett, A. Blackman, E. Ensslin, R. Baris, S. Chau, A. Desai, M. Emerling, M. Takayasu, R. White, and L. Chiesa , “Acoustic sensor development for quench detection in HTS conductors for fusion applications”, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, March 2023. DOI Link