deepSPACE isn’t a futuristic film, a new videogame or the next season of a classic TV series. In fact, the new design software developed by an aerospace engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign isn’t about outer space at all. This new tool takes your concept and requirements and rapidly generates design configurations from conventional to out-of-this-world, including a 3D CAD model and performance evaluations.

Donald L. Bitzer, electrical engineer, computer scientist, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumnus and professor emeritus passed away on Dec. 10, 2024, at the age of 90.

Smitha Vishveshwara will publish her book, Two Revolutions: Relativity and Quantum Physics through Oxford University Press. This personal and scientific narrative traces the intellectual journeys of Smitha and her late father, renowned astrophysicist C.V. (Vishu) Vishveshwara, as they exchanged letters reflecting on the two most transformative revolutions in modern physics: Einstein’s theory of relativity and the quantum revolution.

A multi-institution team led by MechSE’s Janelle Wharry has received $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to pursue the design of new materials that could make nuclear fusion power plants a reality. The grant is from ARPA-E’s Creating Hardened And Durable fusion first Wall Incorporating Centralized Knowledge (CHADWICK) program, which aims to explore promising alloy design spaces and manufacturing processes to develop next-generation materials for the “first wall” that surrounds the fusion core of nuclear fusion reactors.

Assistant Professor Lei Zhao will lead a new NASA funded project hoping to sharpen existing tools used for modeling urbanization. With current technology falling behind scientific need, Zhao’s team will use satellite data to fill in gaps and present a broader picture of how urbanization and climate change interact on different scales.

Leon N. Cooper, a Nobel-winning physicist who helped unlock the secret of how some materials can convey electricity without resistance, a phenomenon called superconductivity, and who did pioneering work in understanding how memory and the brain work, died on Wednesday at his home in Providence, R.I. He was 94.