Academic News – May 2022

MAY 2022

MESSAGE FROM THE PROVOST

Building Lifelong Relationships with Stevens

Once a Duck, always a Duck. I’ve been saying that to people quite a bit lately. And as we approach next week’s commencement ceremonies, I hope that everyone — students, alumni and the faculty and staff who support them — will take that to heart and remember that they are part of a unique and distinguished community. Continue Reading>

Faculty and Staff Spotlight

Mukund Iyengar, Director of the iSTEM Program and Teaching Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Science

Nicole Malantchouk, Associate Director for Corporate Outreach and Professional Advancement

Faculty Awards | Research | Grants

SELECTED FACULTY HONORS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Jinho Kim, Biomedical Engineering (SES), Kathrin Smetana, Mathematical Sciences (SES) and Annie Zhang, Mechanical Engineering (SES), received National Science Foundation CAREER awards, an honor presented to exemplary early-career researchers. Kim received an award of $576.065 for the project, “Biomechanics of Tension-Induced Lung Tissue Fracture and Subsequent Pulmonary Air Leak.” Smetana’s $461,998 award is for “Randomized Multiscale Methods for Heterogeneous Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations.” Zhang plans to use her $500,000 award to investigate how relative twist angles affect the thermal properties of graphene and provide STEM outreach at Stevens and in the community.

Samantha Kleinberg, Computer Science (SES), recently joined a large project that unites many of her research interests: “Nutrition for Precision Health, Powered by the All of Us Research Program.” The overall study was granted $170 million over five years by the National Institutes of Health. Kleinberg and her research lab are receiving $1.26 million of that award.

Eman AlOmar (SSE) was chosen to present three papers at the Mining Software Repositories 2022 conference.

Stefano Bonini (SB) was quoted in a Financial Times story about the future of Elon Musk’s effort to purchase Twitter.

Athula Attygalle, Chemistry and Chemical Biology (SES), received the Arnold Berliner Award for his study of a peculiar beetle. The award is given annually to authors for outstanding original interdisciplinary research.

Kishore Pochiraju, Mechanical Engineering (SES), was named Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Robin Hammerman (CAL) edited and published her latest book, Frankenstein and STEAM: Essays for Charles E. Robinson.

Mo Mansouri (SSE) delivered the keynote speech at the International Conference on Systems (ICONS) 2022 in Barcelona, Spain. His address called attention to the importance of systems-based thinking and showcased SSE as a leader in the field.

Majeed Simaan (SB), was interviewed in Money magazine about the rise of online community investing platforms and how social media brought the concept of community-based investing into the digital age.

Yu Tao (CAL) was profiled in SWE, the magazine of the Society of Women Engineers. The article described her research into discrimination, disparity and oppression among Black, Latina, Asian and women engineers.

LARGEST NEW RESEARCH AWARDS, FEBRUARY-MAY 2022

(Awards for which funding has arrived at Stevens)

February 14: Yuping Huang, Physics (SES) – NASA, $603,369 – Quantum Parametric Mode Sorting (QPMS) LiDAR
February 15: Yu Gan, Biomedical Engineering (SES) – U.S. Department of Agriculture, $300,000 – DSFAS-AI: Food Quality Evaluation Leveraging Robust, Domain Adaptive Deep Learning on Millimeter Wave (mmWave) Images
February 25: Mark Blackburn (SERC) – Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering, $352,628 – WRT-1054: Digital Engineering Migration of ESS System Engineering and Technical Management
February 25: Cheng Chen, Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering (SES) – Army Corps of Engineers, $1,404,104 – Fundamentals of Particulate Amendment Transport and Compaction in Hydraulic Fractures and the Application to Effective Remediation in Low-Permeability Clay
April 12: Jonathan Miller, Davidson Laboratory (SES) – Army Corps of Engineers, $284,466 – Evaluating the Influence of Water Level on Wave Attenuation of Natural and Nature-Based Features in Low-High Energy Environments
May 1: Samantha Kleinberg, Computer Science (SES) – National Science Foundation, $206,682 – Collaborative Research: Using Causal Explanations and Computation to Understand Misplaced Beliefs
May 1: Simon Podkolzin, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science (SES) – National Science Foundation, $200,000 – EAGER: Catalysis Fundamentals of Selective Hydrogenation of Aromatic Hydrocarbons
May 15: Hamidreza Jafarnejad Sani, Mechanical Engineering (SES) – National Science Foundation, $309,811 – Collaborative Research: Towards Attack-Resilient Vision-Guided Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: An Observability Analysis Approach

Academic Faculty and Staff Changes

February 15-May 10, 2022

NEW HIRES AND JOB CHANGES

Charles V. Schaefer Jr., School of Engineering & Science

Sara Elmiligi, Undergraduate Academic Advisor, Computer Science
Weipeng Liu, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rekha Manohar, Associate Director of External Relations
Megan Whittemore, Operations Manager, Computer Science

School of Business

Lisa Burns, Graduate Academic Advisor
Mark Grochowski, Videographer-Photographer
HaoHang Li, Research Analyst, Graduate Studies Information Systems and Analytics
Jesse Lisnow, Operations Director, CRAFT Center
Edward Loeser, Data Engineer, Hanlon Lab
Megan Maher, Executive Assistant to the Dean
Rachel Mazara, Program Coordinator, Graduate Technology Programs

School of Systems & Enterprises