New Faculty 2016

New Faculty 2016

As the sole College of Engineering in the state of Nebraska, we embrace our collaborative role to benefit the state, its youth, and the economy. The college is pleased to welcome these new faculty in 2016-17 who will add their expertise in teaching and research to this endeavor.


BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING


FORREST KIEVIT
Forrest Kievit Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Kievit earned his Ph.D. in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington, followed by postdoctoral and research faculty positions in the Neurological Surgery Department. His research involves developing nanoparticle-based delivery vehicles for transport into the brain for more effective brain cancer and brain injury treatments. This stems from his career goal to help translate a nanomedicine into clinical use to improve the survival and quality of life of neurosurgery patients. The vast majority of Kievit’s research has focused on nanoparticle-mediated delivery of nucleic acids into brain tumors. Looking forward, he plans to continue developing nanoparticles that will allow for greater flexibility in therapeutic payload and disease targeting, including brain injury.



THEO LIOUTAS
Theo Lioutas Research Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering - EAST CAMPUS
Dr. Lioutas joined McCain Foods Limited in 2011 as Chief Science and Technology Officer and a member of the company’s senior Leadership team. McCain Foods Limited employs more than 20,000 people and operates 53 manufacturing facilities on six continents, generating annual revenues of CDN$7.3 billion. Lioutas was responsible for leading the innovation effort to develop breakthroughs in products and processes more aligned with growing consumer needs. He was most recently Senior Vice President of Global Research and Development for Brown-Forman, one of the world’s largest spirits companies and an organization he worked with for 12 years.  Prior to Brown-Forman, Theo built his career at General Mills, Campbell Soup, Kraft Foods, Jacobs-Suchard, Tropicana/Pepsico. He has also significant experience managing and utilizing Agricultural Science and Technology to produce proprietary crop innovation for three of his previous assignments. Born and raised in Greece, Theo moved to the United States for postgraduate studies.  He obtained a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Engineering and a PhD in Food Chemistry and Food Science, both from the University of Illinois.  He is multilingual and is proficient in English, Greek, French and Spanish.



AARON MITTELSTET
Aaron Mittelstet Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering - EAST CAMPUS
Dr. Mittelstet grew up in Enid, Oklahoma.  He received his B.S. from Oklahoma State University in Zoology in 2000.  From 2000 to 2002, he served in the Peace Corps in Guatemala with a focus on animal husbandry. After teaching English in Spain from 2002 to 2004, he returned to Oklahoma to teach Spanish and English as a Second Language for the Enid Public Schools.  He returned to academia in 2007 where he received his M.S. in 2009 in Environmental Science. He then worked as a research engineer and pursued his Ph.D. in the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department at Oklahoma State University. After graduating in December 2015, he began a career as Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the Biological Systems Engineering Department. His research focuses on basic and applied research in hydrologic processes and water resources management at multiple scales, with emphasis on understanding water resources within watersheds, specifically the water balance. Research interests include the (1) application of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool and MODFLOW to study surface and ground water interaction and the impact and sensitivity of aquifer parameters; (2) historical, current and future number of farmers that have and will utilize deficit irrigation to conserve water resources and its effect on ground water levels and streamflow; (3) historical and future encroachment of the Eastern Red Cedar and its impact Nebraska’s water resources; and (4) modeling streambank erosion at the reach and watershed scale and monitoring stabilized streambanks to quantify the effectiveness of various streambank stabilization techniques.



MARK WILKINS
Mark Wilkins Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering - EAST CAMPUS
Director, Industrial Agricultural Products Center, Department of Food Science and Technology
Dr. Wilkins comes to UNL from Oklahoma State University, where he was on the faculty of the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department for 11 years.  Prior to joining OSU, Dr. Wilkins was a postdoctoral engineer at the USDA-Agricultural Research Service’s Citrus and Subtropical Products Laboratory in Winter Haven, Florida. Wilkins earned a M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2004) in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from Purdue University in 1999.  His research interests are in bioprocessing and food processing.  He has co-authored 55 refereed journal articles and 2 book chapters. Wilkins’ teaching interests are in biochemical engineering, food engineering, ethics, and short-term study abroad.  He also served on OSU’s Graduate Faculty Council for 4 years and was the Graduate Program Coordinator for his department at OSU. He is licensed as a Professional Engineer in the state of Oklahoma.  He is married to Lana and has two children: Hannah (4) and Daniel (2).



TIFFANY MESSER
Tiffany Messer Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering / School of Natural Resources - EAST CAMPUS
Dr. Messer will join the BSE Department beginning January 2017. She holds degrees in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering (University of Kentucky, B.S., 2008) and Biological and Agricultural Engineering (North Carolina State University, M.S. 2010, PhD, 2015). Messer will complete her postdoctoral appointment in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in December 2016, where her research has focused on nutrient and insecticide fate and transport in stream systems.  Her research interests reside at the intersection of engineering, ecology, and agriculture with an emphasis on environmental biogeochemistry and water resources in agricultural landscapes. Her research focuses on 1. Emerging technologies such as nutrient recovery from animal manures, 2. Arising issues in water quality associated with the fate, transport and remediation of emerging contaminants in stream, wetland, and agricultural ecosystems, and 3. Assessing risk management and/or mitigation of water-borne contaminants. She will be teaching courses in water quality, environmental engineering, and related areas. Messer received an EPA STAR Fellowship in 2012 that supported majority of her doctoral research and the North Carolina State University Certificate in Teaching in 2014. Additionally, she is an active member of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and the American Ecological Engineering Society (AEES).



YEYIN SHI
Yeyin Shi Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering - EAST CAMPUS
Dr. Yeyin joins the BSE Department in January 2017, with a combined research and extension appointment. Her primary interest is in agricultural information systems, including developing and transforming state-of-the-art technologies to record, transmit, manage, analyze and utilize digital information to address the nexus of health, productivity and sustainability in agricultural production systems. This area benefits from effective and successful interdisciplinary research and collaborations involving agriculture, computer science, statistics, electrical and mechanical engineering, economics, etc. Yeyin graduated with her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural engineering from Oklahoma State University. She gained postdoctoral experience at the University of Florida and Texas A&M University. Her graduate research focused on in-field sensing using various machine vision technologies for variable-rate chemical application and yield prediction. She also worked on an automated cattle creep-feeding system based on wireless sensor technology. Her recent research is related to UAV applications in agronomic research and high-throughput field-based phenotyping.



REBECCA WACHS
Rebecca Wachs Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering - EAST CAMPUS
Dr. Wachs will join the BSE Department beginning January 2017. She earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on the mechanisms of low back pain, and her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She worked for a medical device company, RTI Surgical, Inc., as a senior engineer in research and development. For the past two years, Wachs has pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of Florida in neural engineering. Wachs’ research vision is to use her diverse skills in orthopedics, neural engineering, and clinical translation to develop novel interventions for the treatment of low back pain. She proposes to target this pain with three major arms of research: engineered biomaterials to prevent and reverse nerve growth, targeted delivery of antioxidants to modulate inflammation, and development of in vitro test beds to mimic disease progression.



CHEMICAL & BIOMOLECULAR ENGINEERING


SHUDIPTO KONIKA DISHARI
Shudipto Dishari Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Dishari was a post-doctoral researcher in the Chemical Engineering Department at Pennsylvania State University in Prof. Andrew Zydney’s group. She has also worked with Prof. Michael Hickner in Materials Science and Engineering there. She graduated from National University of Singapore with a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Throughout her multidisciplinary research career, she has developed a wide spectrum of research spanning from biotechnology to energy applications. Her research interests include polymers and nanomaterials, thin films and membranes, energy, chemobiorecognition and biomedical applications.



SIAMAK NEJATI
Siamak Nejati Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Nejati completed his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology (2004), and completed a M.S. degree there in Biotechnology (2007). He received his Ph.D. (2013) from Drexel University in Chemical Engineering. He moved to Yale University as a postdoctoral research associate, working under the supervision of professors Menachem Elimelech and Chinedum Osuji in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. At Yale, Nejati’s research focused on materials development for membrane-based separation processes. During his doctoral studies, he developed new methods to integrate polymeric materials into highly tortuous matrices. His research centers on polymeric materials, nanostructures and coatings. He strives to develop economically viable and advanced methods for addressing the current challenges to water and energy supplies and security.



RAJIB SAHA
Rajib Saha Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Saha worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the Himadri Pakrasi Lab in the Biology Department at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated with an M.S. (2011) and Ph.D. (2014) in Chemical Engineering from the Costas Maranas Lab at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Throughout his multidisciplinary graduate research career, he has developed metabolic network models for photosynthetic organisms and utilized those to study their physiology and also for metabolic engineering applications. His research interests include reconstruction and analysis of genome-scale and community models, systems-levelanalysis of ‘omics’ data, development of genetic toolkit and engineering metabolic pathways, and redesign photosynthetic apparatus and carbon fixing mechanism.



CIVIL ENGINEERING


ASHRAF ALY HASSAN
 Ashraf Aly Hassan Research Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Hassan has over 15 years of experience practicing environmental engineering with an emphasis on air quality. He is a licensed professional engineer in Nebraska. He served as the R&D team leader at BioAir Solutions and wrote air pollution permits for high profile industries at the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. He was an ORISE post-doctoral fellow at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) National Risk Management Research Laboratory. Hassan has two patents and over 40 peer reviewed publications. He has received two prestigious Air and Waste Management Association awards: Feldstein Memorial Scholarship and the 2011 Ph.D. dissertation award. Research areas encompass emission control technologies, biological treatment of recalcitrant air toxics, use of innovative technology in atmospheric and indoor air pollution control, treatment, fate, transport of emerging contaminants, and advanced water/wastewater treatment processes development.



JONGWAN EUN
Jongwan Eun Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering - SCOTT CAMPUS
Dr. Eun received his Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering (emphasis on geoenvironmental engineering) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014) and M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin (2010). He was a lecturer and research associate at New York University Abu Dhabi, teaching fundamental engineering subjects and leading a global research project related to oil recovery enhancement and innovative farming system with renewable energy. During his two-year postdoc at UW-Madison, he developed and managed diverse projects related to field monitoring of wind turbine foundation, geothermal heating and cooling system, engineering characterization of recycled material and geosynthetic. He also had professional experience as a field engineer in Dongmyung E&C Co., after obtaining a bachelor’s degree from Yonsei University in South Korea. His research interest is focused on the analysis and design optimization of geotechnical and geoenvironmental systems, energy geotechnics, and radioactive material disposal facility.



GEORGE A. HUNT
George Hunt Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Civil Engineering - SCOTT CAMPUS
Dr. Hunt received his B.S. in Physics with a minor in Mathematics from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) and an M.E. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, specializing in environmental engineering, from the University of Virginia. His graduate research focused on hydrodynamic and water quality modeling of coastal waters. Hunt has over 13 years of professional experience in civil engineering, both in engineering consulting firms as well as at state and federal agencies including the North Carolina Division of Water Quality and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Most recently, he was a senior civil engineer at Burns and McDonnell in Omaha. His research and teaching interests are in surface water hydrology, hydrodynamic and water quality modeling, and watershed management. He is a licensed professional engineer in Iowa.



SEUNGHEE KIM
Seunghee Kim Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering - SCOTT CAMPUS
Dr. Kim received a bachelor’s (2003) and a master’s degree (2005) from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). After graduation, Kim worked at an engineering company and a national research institute in South Korea. Kim received a Ph.D. degree from Georgia Tech (2012) and then joined the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin as a postdoctoral fellow. After that, he joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Western New England University, Massachusetts, to serve as an assistant professor.




CHRISTINE WITTICH
Christine Wittich Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Wittich will join the CIVE Department beginning January 2017. She obtained an M.S. and Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Lafayette College. Her research focuses on structural dynamics, engineering mechanics, and full-scale experimentation of structures. Recent projects include shake table tests of multi-body rocking systems, experimental modal analysis of cultural heritage structures, and probabilistic assessments of precariously balanced rocks.




COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING


HAMID BAGHERI
Hamid Bagheri Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Bagheri previously was a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He has also visited Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral research fellow. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia (2013), his M.Sc. in Software Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (2008), and his B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Tehran (2005). Bagheri is broadly interested in software engineering, particularly in practical software analysis and synthesis using concepts from fields like formal methods, program analysis, model-driven development, and software architecture. He has been prolific in his early career, developing several novel techniques, including new methods and tools for compositional analysis of Android inter-app vulnerabilities, synthesis of application-specific frameworks, and synthesis of tradeoff spaces for object-relational databases. His research has been published in such prestigious venues as IEEE TSE, ICSE, FSE, FM and MoDELS, among others. He has been a finalist at the ACM student research competition and his publications in several conferences were recognized as best papers.



BRADY GARVIN
Brady Garvin Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Computer Science & Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Garvin’s primary role will be in curriculum development and instruction for the CSE department's new major in software engineering. Previously, Garvin taught computer science courses for non-majors at Nebraska Wesleyan University (NWU) and was also responsible for their redesign to incorporate blended learning with online, interactive labs.  He has helped lead and organize computer science events at NWU, including invited talks, visits to research labs, and an annual competition in the programming game Robocode; he also led an after-school club on programming, constructive solid geometry, and 3D printing at Prescott Elementary. Garvin has worked on projects with Mutual of Omaha, Design Data, IBM, and NASA, and has pursued a line of research in software engineering that focuses on feature-interaction faults, faults that are only detectable when certain combinations of features appear in a system's configuration.  His publications in the area have appeared in venues such as ISSRE, FSE, and EMSE, and he also has publications in theoretical computer science. He earned a B.S. (2008) in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (J.D. Edwards Honors Program in Computer Science and Management); his M.S. (2009) and Ph.D. (2016) are in Software Engineering from the University of Nebraska.



THANHVU NGUYEN
Thanhvu Nguyen Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Nguyen received B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of New Mexico. After this graduate study, he was a postdoc at the University of Maryland. His research interests lie in the intersection of software engineering and programming languages, with a particular focus on using static and dynamic analyses for automatic invariant generation and program repair.




THE DURHAM SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION


FADI ALSALEEM
Fadi Alsaleem Assistant Professor, The Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction - SCOTT CAMPUS
Dr. Alsaleem joins the Architectural Engineering program in The Durham School. Previously he was an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Wichita State University from 2015 to 2016. Prior to these assignments, Alsaleem worked for four years as a Senior Lead Algorithm Engineer at Emerson Climate technology, a business of Emerson. At Emerson, Alsaleem developed novel (cloud-based) sensor monitoring and learning algorithms used for fault diagnostics and energy supervision for residential HVAC systems. After he earned his M.S. (2007) and Ph.D. (2009) from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at State University of New York at Binghamton, Alsaleem joined MicrostaQ Inc. (Austin, Texas) for two years as a MEMS Control Engineer. In this role he developed novel control algorithms to control MEMS micro-fluidic valves in energy saving applications for different HVAC and refrigeration systems. He is an active researcher in Nonlinear dynamics of MEMS, Smart MEMS, IoT, Smart Building, Online monitoring and diagnostics, and Big data analysis. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed conferences and journal papers and has authored/coauthored more than 10 pending and granted patent applications in the area of MEMS adaptive control and cloud-based online monitoring and diagnostics.



ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING


ANDREW HARMS
Andrew Harms Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering - SCOTT CAMPUS
Dr. Harms received a B.S. degree (summa cum laude) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame (2008) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University (2013). Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University working with Prof. Jeffrey Krolik from 2013 to 2016. He has also spent time at the Air Force Research Labs (AFRL) working on non-linear estimation problems and at AT&T Labs working on detection of wireless television signals. His research interests include statistical signal processing, efficient sampling and processing of signals, information theory, and signal processing for radar systems.



MECHANICAL & MATERIALS ENGINEERING


PRAHALADA RAO
Prahalada Rao Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Rao’s research focuses on sensor-based monitoring and diagnosis of complex bio-physical and manufacturing processes (e.g., additive manufacturing, ultraprecision machining, semiconductor planarization, and neurophysiology). In 2015, he was awarded a NSF grant (CMMI 1538059) for applying graph theoretic techniques towards monitoring of neurophysiological anomalies. Prior to joining UNL, he was assistant professor (2014-2016), System Science and Industrial Engineering (SSIE), at Binghamton University. From 2013-2014, he was a post-doctoral research associate at Virginia Tech. He received a B.Engg. (First Class) in Production Engineering from Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI), Bombay University, India (2003), and his M.S. (2006) and Ph.D. (2013) in industrial engineering from Oklahoma State University (OSU). He received the OSU Alpha Pi Mu Outstanding Research Assistant Award in 2008.



RUIGUO YANG
Ruiguo Yang Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering - CITY CAMPUS
Dr. Yang received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering (2004) and a master’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering (2007) from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Michigan State University (2014). From 2014 to 2016, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University and a research scientist at iNfinitesimal llc, a nanotechnology startup. He is the recipient of the Best Paper Award in IEEE International Conference on Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems in 2010. His current research includes nanorobotics, bioMEMS and mechanobiology. His research group will design and develop micro/nanosytems for cellular engineering to manipulate cells through delivery of biomolecules, to study cell-cell interactions and to understand mechanotransduction under physio/pathological conditions, all at the single cell level.



JAE SUNG PARK
Jae Sung Park Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering - EAST CAMPUS
Dr. Park will join the MME Department beginning January 2017. He received his M.S. (2008) and Ph.D. (2012) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (2006) at Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea. He worked as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests encompass a wide range of fluid mechanics, covering from low Reynolds number flows (Ph.D. research) to high Reynolds number flows (postdoctoral research), focusing on complex fluids, colloidal suspensions, electrokinetics, and turbulent flow. Most of his research centers around techniques for energy-saving engineering and nanotechnology. He develops advanced computational algorithms to investigate various problems in fluid mechanics. His publications include articles in academic journals (Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physical Review E, Soft Matter, and others).