With continued growth, College of Engineering adds 10 new faculty for 2017-18

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Engineering has added 10 new faculty for 2017-18, increasing the college's total faculty hires to 56 over the past three years.

Among the new faculty is Jena Shafai Asgarpoor, the new director of the nationally renowned Master of Engineering Management Program.

The new faculty will be working on the college's three campuses: City and East campuses in Lincoln and Scott Campus in Omaha. They will serve a college that has registered record undergraduate enrollment each year since 2007-08 and has seen overall enrollment grow 24.6 percent in that same time period.

Here are the faculty who have joined the College of Engineering and a look at their research interests and backgrounds:

Matthew Barrows, assistant professor of practice, The Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Barrows was in the construction industry for 16 years and recently received his master's degree in engineering from the University of Colorado-Denver.

Mona Bavarian, research assistant professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Bavarian's research interests are in the areas of process systems engineering, process and product design, model-based control and optimization, smart manufacturing for microelectronics materials and continuous flow chemistry.

Brandon Kreiling, assistant professor of practice, The Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Kreiling's professional career has revolved around structural concrete, including working the last 10 years with drilled pier foundations, and he has an interest in working to advance concrete mix designs and in admixture development.

Ryan Pedrigi, assistant professor, Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Pedrigi's work centers on mechanobiology, with research that employs experimental and computational methods to quantify how disturbances to the tissue mechanical environment promote pathological cellular behaviors and using that information to develop mechano-therapies, identify new pharmaceutical targets, create prognostic indicators of disease progression, and improve the design of implantable medical devices.

Xin Qiao, assistant professor (Panhandle Research and Extension Center), Biological Systems Engineering: Qiao's research includes work in the areas of deficit irrigation, variable rate irrigation, sensor technology, modeling and remote sensing.

Vish Reddi, assistant professor of practice, The Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Reddi's work can be found at the crossroads where construction and engineering meet operational excellence and in finding innovative ways to reduce the cost and improve the performance of health facilities.

Jena Shafai Asgarpoor, associate professor of practice, The Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction; director, Master of Engineering Program: Shafai Asgarpoor developed and taught courses in the first fully online MBA program in the nation and has 21 years of college-level teaching that includes engineering management and industrial engineering education. Her professional interests include quality control and management.

Ali Tamoyal, assistant professor, Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Tamayol's work includes developing tools for solving medical challenges, and the design, fabrication and characterization of microsystems and fibrous biomaterials for emerging applications such as tissue engineering and drug delivery platforms.

Stephanie Valentine, assistant professor, Computer Science and Engineering / The Raikes School: Valentine works at the intersection of human-computer interaction, social network analysis, machine learning, and K-12/higher education, and is particularly interested in elective technologies for casually teaching children aged 7-12 in social and connected virtual environments.

Kuan Zhang, assistant professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering: Zhang's research includes work in security and privacy for wireless networks, including developing secure and efficient networking protocols and applications for cyber physical systems.

For more information, contact Karl Vogel, communications specialist, College of Engineering, at (402) 472-0451 or email: kvogel2@unl.edu.