Kartik Balachandran, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Jing Yang, assistant professor of electrical engineering, have received awards from the Faculty Early Career Development Program of the National Science Foundation. This distinguished award, known as the CAREER award, supports junior faculty who have demonstrated an ability to integrate outstanding research with excellent teaching. Balachandran and Yang each received a grant of $500,000.
Two biomedical engineering professors at have received a three-year, $395,722 grant from the National Science Foundation to study how brain cells respond to traumatic injury. Assistant professors Kartik Balachandran and Jeffrey Wolchok and their team are trying to determine if neuron-supporting cells known as astrocytes create a degenerative extracellular environment after traumatic injuries.
Michelle Bernhardt, assistant professor of civil engineering, has received a three-year grant for $340,035 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a technology agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. Bernhardt will develop discrete element method simulations that can be used to examine the metal powder behavior in direct metal laser sintering devices, one of the techniques known as additive manufacturing or 3D printing.
Christophe Bobda, an associate professor of computer science and computer engineering, is co-editor of Distributed Embedded Smart Cameras. The newly released textbook covers the architecture, design and applications of a new wave of cameras, known as smart cameras, which analyze video data internally and thus limit the amount of data that needs to be sent to remote servers.
Richard Coffman, assistant professor of civil engineering, has received $1.14 million in funding to develop a decision support system for assessing areas at risk for mudslides or rock falls caused by the effects of wildfires.
John Gauch, computer science and computer engineering professor at the University of Arkansas, helped create an introductory programming class for high school students in Arkansas. The creation of this course was in response to the Computer Science House Bill 1183, which calls for Arkansas high schools to offer coding classes. At the end of January, Gauch served on the 2015 Arkansas Computer Science Coding Course Committee. The committee of teachers, curriculum specialists and higher education representatives
created a framework for the new course, “Essentials of Computer Programming.”
Micah Hale, associate department head of civil engineering, is one of four faculty members at the University of Arkansas who have been selected as a 2014- 15 SEC Academic Leadership Development Program fellows.
University of Arkansas professors Marty Matlock and Greg Thoma led a sustainability workshop at
the 2015 International Production and Processing Expo in Atlanta, Georgia. Matlock, executive director of the U of A Office for Sustainability, and Greg Thoma, the Bates Teaching Professor in the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering, led the Animal Agriculture Sustainability Summit during the poultry
industry’s largest trade show.
Principal investigator Paul Millett, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, will work with researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University and the Idaho National Laboratory.
At the annual conference of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences, Greg Parnell, research professor, received the Frank P. Ramsey medal, the highest award of the Data Analysis Society.
Heather Nachtmann, professor of industrial engineering and associate dean for research for the College of Engineering, was elected by the American Society for Engineering Management to a four year position which rotates from secretary, president-elect, president to past-president.
Darin Nutter, professor of mechanical engineering, received the Midwest Section Outstanding Teaching Award from the American Society for Engineering Education.
Ed Pohl, head of the industrial engineering department, was elected to a three-year term serving as the south central regional director for the American Society for Engineering Management.
Chase Rainwater, assistant professor of industrial engineering and Douglas Spearot, associate professor of mechanical engineering and holder of the Twenty-First Century Professorship in Mechanical Engineering, attended the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers in Engineering Education Symposium in Irvine, CA. This by-invitation symposium was composed of premier educators in all disciplines of engineering and discussed current trends and future needs in engineering education.
D. Keith Roper has been appointed leader of the Engineering Research Centers Program and the Network for Computational Nanotechnology in the Engineering Division of Engineering Education and Centers at the National Science Foundation.
Lalit Verma, head of the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at the University of Arkansas, was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Biological Systems Engineering Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he received his doctorate.
Ranil Wickramasinghe, professor of chemical engineering and Xianghong Qian, associate professor of biomedical engineering, received a grant of $280,000 for a period of three years from the Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund. They are collaborating with researchers at Technion in Israel on a project to study the use of self-cleaning membranes in agricultural water treatment.
The NSF Center of Excellence in GRid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems (GRAPES) received a $200,000 Innovative Managing Director Grant from the National Science Foundation. GRAPES’ managing director is T.A. Walton.
Fisher Yu, associate professor of electrical engineering, and colleagues Wei Du, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering; Benjamin Conley, doctoral student in the microelectronics-photonics graduate program; and Hameed Naseem, professor of electrical engineering, have fabricated a new semiconductor material, germanium tin deposited in layers on a substrate of silicon, that could be used to build better and less expensive infrared cameras for smartphones and vehicles.
Wenchao Zhou, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, received the 2013-2014 Emerald Engineering Outstanding Doctoral Research Highly Commended Award in the category of Additive Manufacturing.