(4gp) Fast Prototyping, Additive Manufacturing, and Rheology: Designing Better Systems and Tooling

My research falls in the intersection of complex fluids, fast prototyping, and device design.

My poster will focus on three areas of past and ongoing work: digital design of low-cost, high-accuracy tooling for rheometric measurements, fast prototyping of microfluidic devices (from off-the-shelf LEGO toys), and design of printing processes for additive manufacturing of integrated electronics circuitry from pure carbon nanotubes and from carbon nanotube composites. Related areas include past work developing devices to scalably drive self-assembly of micro/nanoparticles using megasonic (MHz) acoustic fields. A key long term vision is to design devices and flow processes to enable better manufacturing, research, and education. Please also see my longer talk on designing new nanocomposites for details on ongoing work.

Teaching Interests:

During my time at MIT, I have been a Teaching Assistant for an undergraduate Fluid Mechanics course, and I assisted in content creation and laboratory instruction of MIT’s Professional Summer Short Course (xPRO) on Additive Manufacturing for four years, and the development of a related online “AdditiveX” course. I participated in MIT’s Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program which taught evidence-based approaches to effective pedagogy, and in programs from the MIT Teaching and Learning Lab on how to TA and how to effectively mentor undergraduate researchers. I have further developed and run departmental workshops on effective oral and written communication as a Communications Lab Fellow over the last two years.

I am comfortable teaching a wide range of courses but have greatest interest towards courses related to fluid mechanics, polymer physics, materials design, and applied machine learning. While my coursework has been predominantly within Mechanical Engineering, I have taken and audited a large series of courses in the Chemical and Materials Engineering departments.

Selected Publications:

[4] C. E. Owens, R. J. Headrick, S. Williams, A. J. Fike*, M. Pasquali, G. H. McKinley, A. J. Hart. Substrate-versatile direct-write printing of carbon nanotube-based flexible conductors, circuits, and sensors. Advanced Functional Materials, 2021. Recently accepted (*indicates undergraduate mentee)

[3] C. E. Owens, A. J. Hart, G. H. McKinley. Improved rheometry of yield stress fluids using bespoke fractal 3D printed vanes. Journal of Rheology, 2020. Journal cover art; featured article. One of top 15 most downloaded JOR papers of 2020.

[2] C. E. Owens, A. J. Hart. High-precision modular microfluidics by micromilling of interlocking injection-molded blocks. Lab on a Chip, 2018. Work featured on MIT news. In the top 5% of highly cited articles with RSC journals in 2019.

[1] C. E. Owens, C. W. Shields IV, D. F. Cruz, P. Charbonneau, G. P. López. Highly parallel acoustic assembly of microparticles into well-ordered colloidal crystallites. Soft Matter, 2016.