DANIEL G. COLE
Research Assistant Professor,
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Contact Information
3359A CIEMAS
(PH) 919-660-5417
(FX) 919-660-5409
dgcole@duke.edu

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Education

	PhD	Harmonic and narrowband disturbance rejection of linear time-periodic plants, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1998
	MS	Design of and initial experiments with a MIMO plate control testbed, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992
	BS	Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991

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Experience

	2001-present	Senior Research Scientist, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University
	1999-2001	Engineering Specialist, Lord Corporation, Cary, NC
	1999-2001	Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University
	1998-1998	Research Assistant, Center for Intelligent Materials Systems and Structures, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
	1996-1997	Instructor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
	1993-1998	Vice President & Sr. Research Scientist, Adaptive Technologies, Inc., Blacksburg, VA
	1991-1995	Graduate Project Assistant, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Selected Publications

1. D. G. Cole, W. R. Saunders, and H. H. Robertshaw. Modal parameter estimation for piezostructures. J. Vib. and Acoust., 1993.
2. D. G. Cole and R. L. Clark. Adaptive compensation of piezoelectric sensoriactuators. J. Intel. Mat. Sys. Struct., 5(5):665–672, 1994.
3. W. R. Saunders, D. G. Cole, and H. H. Robertshaw. Experiments in piezostructure modal analysis for MIMO feedback control. J. Smart Materials and Structures,3:210–218, 1994
4. R. L. Clark and D. G. Cole. Active damping of enclosed sound fields through direct rate feedback control. J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 97(3):1710–1716, 1995.
5. R. L. Clark, D. G. Cole, and K. D. Frampton. Phase compensation for feedback controlof enclosed sound fields with in-bandwidth transducers. J. of Sound & Vib., 195(5):701–718, 1996.
6. W. R. Saunders, D. G. Cole, and C. A. Fannin. Similitude analysis for piezostructures. J. Intel. Mat. Sys. Struct., 7(2):162–167, 1996.
   

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Certifications

Professional Engineer, #027021, North Carolina State Board Of Examiners For Engineers And Surveyors.

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Research Interest

Precision instrumentation for delivering and regulating force and torque at the nanoscale

My interest is in developing the technology to deliver regulated torques to nanosystems; such torques would be on the order of piconewton-nanometers. Helically structured light possessing angular momentum can be used in an optical trapping arrangement to deliver angular momentum to trapped particles thereby applying a torque to the trapped object. Position and orientation of a trapped object can be achieved with a trapping beam constructed from the interference of a helical wave front and a plane wave. My research focuses on developing an optical trap using a conventional single-beam trap ar-chitecture; constructing the requisite helically-structured laser beam modes as Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam modes; and constructing an interference pattern between LG beam modes and plane-wave beam modes. We will perform torque spectroscopy experiments of biomolecules using candidate molecules such as coiled-coil proteins like myosin, modular matrix proteins like fibronectin and tenascin, and the DNA double helix.

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