Professor Dunn, Lihua, and visiting scholar Chao had a great time in downtown Chicago for the Tribology Frontiers Conference organized by Dr. David Burris from the University of Delaware. Professor Dunn presented Prabhakaran & Hao’s work on wear of hardened steels — take a journey under a train to get a feel for it. Lihua presented his work on the friction differences in sister species of beetles – one that displays iridescence and one that doesn’t, in collaboration with Marianne Alleyne and Tommy McElrath at Illinois.

Otherwise we had some great discussions about biology and bioinspiration with these researchers:

Angela Pitenis – new faculty at UCSB working on the biological cues of inflammation due to applied shear

Stanislav Gorb – plenary speaker on snakeskin friction

David Burris – groundbreaking research on the frequency of activity required for optimal cartilage function