New Faculty Virginia Tech's College of Engineering 2008-2009

Introducing the
New Faculty
(Tenured and Tenure-track)
of
Virginia Tech’s
College of
Engineering
2008-2009
Academic Year
Rafael V. Davalos, a faculty member of the
Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of
Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (SBES),
joined the Virginia Tech College of Engineering in
2006. Since then, a new technology he developed
with Boris Rubinsky, a bioengineering professor
at the University of California, Berkeley, that
uses electric pulses to destroy cancer tissue
was named by NASA Tech Briefs as one of seven
key technological breakthroughs of 2007. The
technology remains under development. Davalos
was the 2006 recipient of the Hispanic Engineer
National Achievement Award for Most Promising
Engineer.

OVERVIEW
This year, the College of Engineering is pleased to present
25 new faculty.
Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Robert Canfield
Mazen Farhood
Gary Don Seidel
Biological Systems Engineering
David Sample
Durelle Scott
Ryan S. Senger
Chemical Engineering
Chris Cornelius
William A. Ducker
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Amy Pruden
Russell A. Green
Erich Hester
Cristopher Moen
Glenn E. Moglen
Computer Science
Barbara G. Ryder
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Joseph Baker
Marius Owlowski
John Ruohoniemi
Engineering Education
Holly Matusovich
Engineering Science and Mechanics
Anne E. Staples
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Jaime Camelio
Christian Wernz
Mechanical Engineering
Bahareh Benkam
Tomonari Furukawa
Rolf Mueller
Mining and Minerals Engineering
Kray Luxbacher
AEROSPACE AND OCEAN ENGINEERING
Robert Canfield attended Duke University,
where he earned his bachelor’s degree
summa cum laude in 1983 in mechanical
engineering with an Air Force ROTC
scholarship. He was then commissioned in
the USAF.
He subsequently earned his master’s
degree in aeronautics and astronautics at
Stanford University in 1984, and his Ph.D.
in engineering mechanics at Virginia Tech
Canfield
in 1992, under the direction of Professor
Leonard Meirovitch.
He served two tours of duty on the faculty of the Air Force
Institute of Technology (AFIT), and one tour at the Air Force
Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Since 2000 he has
been an associate professor at AFIT. From 2002 until 2004 he
served as the deputy head of its Department of Aeronautics
and Astronautics.
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For one year prior to joining AFIT, he was AFOSR Program
Manager of Computational Mathematics in Arlington,
Va. He managed a $5 million portfolio of some two dozen
world-renowned researchers. From June 1998 to May 1999,
he served as the Director of Policy and Integration for AFOSR,
responsible for planning, financial management, support and
administration of the Air Force’s $300 million basic research
program.
From September of 1996 until May of 1998 he served as
the Chief of Plans and Budget for AFOSR, managing the Air
Force’s $300 million investment strategy for basic research.
From August of 1997 until December of 1997 he worked for the
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science, Technology and Engineering
as the Planning and Resources Manager for the $1.2
billion Air Force science and technology budget.
He was an assistant professor of aerospace engineering
at AFIT from 1993 through 1996. In 1996 he also served as an
adjunct professor at the University of Dayton. From 1984 until
1989 he was an aerospace engineer at the Flight Dynamics
Directorate of Wright Laboratories, Wright-Patterson AFB.
His field of expertise is multidisciplinary design optimization
(MDO), and he has served as chair of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) MDO Technical
Committee, and as general chair of the 2008 AIAA/ISSMO
Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization Conference. He
has published 34 journal articles, 67 conference papers, and
co-authored a textbook on reliability-based structural design.
Among his awards, he has received the AIAA Sustained
Service Award in 2007, the Dr. Leslie M. Norton Award for
Excellence in Teaching in 2005 from the AFIT Student Association,
the Gage H. Crocker Outstanding Professor Award in
2004 from the AFIT Board of Visitors, the 2004 Outstanding
Engineers and Scientists Award from the Affiliates Society
Council of the Engineering and Science Foundation of Dayton,
the AIAA Distinguished Service Award for 2003–2005, and a
host of medals from the Air Force.
He will be a member of AOE’s structures group, and will
also be involved in the Multidisciplinary Analysis and Design
(MAD) Center activities.
Mazen Farhood attended the American
University of Beirut in Lebanon, earning
a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering
in 1999. He then pursued graduate
studies at the University of Illinois, earning
his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in 2001
and 2005, respectively. His dissertation research
focused on the control of nonlinear
systems along pre-specified trajectories
using semidefinite programming.
Farhood
He subsequently held postdoctoral positions
at the University of Illinois and Georgia Tech. At Illinois,
he developed analysis and synthesis results for the control of
distributed systems over general graph interconnection structures.
At Georgia Tech, he devised linear parameter-varying
(LPV) techniques for the regulation of agile aerial vehicles
about aggressive trajectories in the presence of obstacles.
This work was specifically motivated by the challenges encountered
in landing Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL)
vehicles, where the vehicle mismanagement relative to its environment
could lead to grave consequences.
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Since the fall of 2007 he was a scientific researcher at
the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. There,
he developed integral quadratic constraint (IQC) analysis and
synthesis tools as part of a European Space Agency (ESA)
project.
He hopes to continue his work at Virginia Tech, focusing
on the development of robust tools for the cooperative control
of multi-vehicle systems in complex environments. He also
plans to work on reducing the computational complexity of
such problems through model reduction and simplified computational
algorithms exploiting the problem structure. Other
topics of interest to him include embedded software verification
and validation where all levels of system implementation are to
be examined.
He is interested in teaching graduate courses on semidefinite
programming and its various applications in control, as
well as established courses on dynamic systems and control
from the undergraduate and graduate curricula.
At Virginia Tech, he will be a member of the dynamics
and control group in the Aerospace and Ocean Engineering
Department, and will also be involved in the activities of the
Virginia Center for Autonomous Systems.
Gary Don Seidel earned all three of
his degrees in aerospace engineering at
Texas A&M University. He received his
bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in
1999, his master’s in 2002, and his doctorate
in 2007. For the past year, he served
as a postdoctoral research associate in
the Texas Institute of Intelligent Bio-Nano
Materials and Structures for Aerospace
Vehicles and as a lecturer in the Aerospace
Seidel
Engineering Department at Texas A&M.
Seidel’s research has primarily focused on the theoretical
development and computational implementation of multi-scale
models with particular emphasis on analytic and computational
micromechanics approaches. This research has been part of
efforts to develop multi-scale models for assessing structure
property relations in multi-functional nanocomposites consisting
primarily of carbon nanotube reinforced polymers, and
has been successful in identifying some of the key features
effecting nanocomposite properties, e.g. the importance of
bonding relative to clustering on elastic properties, the relative
importance of some of the mechanisms behind the formation
of conductive networks on electrical properties, and the significance
of interfacial thermal resistance on thermal properties.
The results of these efforts have been presented at numerous
professional society meetings and conferences, and have led
to the publication of four refereed journal articles. This work
has been part of on-going collaborative efforts with research
scientists both at Sandia National Laboratories, the National
Institute of Aerospace, and Texas A&M, and has led to additional
funding from both NASA and NSF.
Additionally, Seidel’s research interests include the development
and application of cohesive zone models for capturing
damage evolution in polymer composites, methods for bridging
atomistic and continuum length and time scales in nanocomposites;
micromechanics modeling of materials with time-varying
effective properties due to microstructural evolution, and
active materials.
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Among his awards he held the Sandia National Laboratories
(SNL)/Texas A&M University Doctoral Fellowship in Engineering
from 2002 until 2006, and was recently awarded the
2007-2008 Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University
Distinguished Graduate Student Award for excellence in
doctoral research. As part of his master’s studies, he received
a Texas A&M University Regents Fellowship from 1999 until
2000, and in 2000 was named to SNL’s Engineering Sciences
Summer Institute.
His activity in the community has included serving as a
reviewer for the Philosophical Magazine and the Journal of
Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, co-chairing the
Multiscale Modeling of Engineering Materials Symposium at
the 43rd technical meeting of the Society of Engineering Science
(SES), and co-organizing the student poster competition
for Nano Summit 2007 held at Texas A&M. He has judged for
Texas A&M’s Student Research Week on several occasions.
Seidel served as the vice president in the inaugural year of the
Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Student Association
(NaNSA) at Texas A&M, and held the presidency of the Texas
Delta Chapter of Tau Beta Pi in 1998 and in 1999.
Seidel is also a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics, American Society of Mechanical Engineers,
Society of Engineering Science, American Society for
Engineering Education, and the Society for Natural Philosophy.
He will be a member of the aerospace and ocean engineering’s
structures group, and will also be involved in the
ICTAS Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory.
BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
David J. Sample received his bachelor’s
degree in environmental engineering
and his master’s degree in water resources
engineering from the University of Florida
in 1981 and in 1984, respectively. He spent
ten years in industry and public practice
before moving to Colorado in 1994, working
and ultimately earning his Ph.D. from
the University of Colorado (UC) at Boulder
in civil engineering (CE) with a focus upon
Sample
water resources in 2003.
Sample based his master’s degree on water reuse, work
he performed in his first position as a water resource engineer
with the South Florida Water Management District in West
Palm Beach, Fla., spending about one year with them. Sample
spent the next three years in Atlanta with the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency’s regional office in the Water Management
Division. In 1986, he moved to Newton, Mass., where he
practiced environmental engineering for GZA Environmental.
He returned to Georgia in 1987 and spent the next five
years in municipal engineering with Richmond and Columba
Counties (near Augusta), and the City of Gainesville. Sample
was the city engineer for Gainesville, Ga., and developed several
ongoing stormwater management programs for them.
When he moved to Colorado in 1993, he started as a
teaching assistant in CE at the UC. For part of the time, he
was also a research assistant in the University’s Center for Advanced
Decision Support and Environmental Sciences (CAD-
SWES). In 1994 he became a National Science Foundation
(NSF)-sponsored graduate research assistant in the Univer-
5

sity’s Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information
Center.
In 1995 he was named district engineer for the Left Hand
Water District of Longmont, Colo., a municipal agency focused
upon provision of water supply to a portion of Boulder County,
Colorado. After two years he returned as a teaching assistant
in UC’s CE department. A year later he was named a USEPAsponsored
graduate research assistant in the civil, environmental,
and architectural engineering department at UC.
In 2000 he returned to Georgia to become a senior water
resource engineer at LAW Engineering, Kennesaw, Ga. Since
2005 he has worked at Brown and Caldwell of Atlanta as its
Atlanta area practice leader for water resources.
His research interests are in the integration of water conservation/irrigation
and stormwater quality management in
support of: low impact development; performance assessment
and detailed process modeling in support of design of best
management practices (BMPs) for mitigation of stormwater
impacts; and integrated modeling with GIS for water resources
management, and optimization applied to BMP selection and
design.
Since 2005 Durelle Scott has been an
assistant professor of geosciences at the
University of Nebraska – Lincoln. He has
concentrated on aquatic biogeochemistry,
surface water – groundwater interactions,
river network modeling, and aqueous geochemistry.
His goal is to improve the water quality
of inland and coastal waters, and to provide
an understanding of how external anthropogenic
and climatic forcings alter water re-
Scott
sources. His group at the University of Nebraska examined the
fate and transport of solutes within lotic systems over a range
of temporal and spatial scales. The work focuses on areas of
high hydrologic retention and sharp redox gradients where high
biogeochemical transformations occur, from riverine floodplains
in Louisiana (USGS funding) to hyporheic zones within
streams (NSF funding).
Other projects currently underway include: examining the
effects of invasive species on water quality and quantity (NE
funding); DON and DOC evolution through watersheds (NSF
funding); and the impacts of melting glaciers on the delivery of
water and nutrients to the Gulf of Alaska.
Prior to his academic position, he spent from 2003 until
2005 on a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship
at the U.S. Geological Survey located at Reston, Va. From
2001 until 2003 he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Landcare
Research of Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Scott received all three of his degrees from the University
of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his bachelor’s in civil, environmental,
and architectural engineering in 1996, his master’s
in environmental and water resources engineering in 1997, and
his doctorate in environmental engineering in 2001.
He is a member of the American Water Resources Association
and the American Geophysical Union.
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Since receiving his doctorate in 2005
in chemical engineering (ChE) from Colorado
State University, Ryan S. Senger has
continued his training as a post-doctoral
researcher. He worked for one year in the
ChE department at Texas Tech and was
involved in the design a new laboratory and
the development of cell-signaling models
related to secondary metabolite production
from plants.
Senger
He then relocated to the Department
of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University
where he began work in modeling cellular differentiation
based on high-throughput genomic-scale data. In May of 2007,
Senger was awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research
Service Award (NRSA) postdoctoral fellowship from the National
Institutes of Health. Since October of 2007, he has continued
this research at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute as
part of the ChE department at the University of Delaware.
The title of his NIH NRSA fellowship proposal was
Clostridial Genome-Scale Metabolic and Regulatory Model
of Differentiation. As part of his training, Senger completed a
genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction of Clostridium
acetobutylicum. From this, he created a genome-scale metabolic
flux model and used it as a tool to direct metabolic engineering
endeavors. In this work, Senger invented new sets of
tools for obtaining solutions from genome-scale flux models
that represent observable phenotypes. These included the
consideration of proton flux states and numerically-determined
sub-systems. Senger then used these tools to gain a further
understanding of the genetic circuits and molecular events that
lead to solvent (biofuels) production and eventually spore formation
by C. acetobutylicum.
Among his research accomplishments, he developed the
first artificial intelligence-based models for the prediction of N-
linked protein glycosylation site-occupancy and glycan branching.
He has also developed statistical tools and automated programs
for analyzing microarray data, conducted gene ontology
to identify transcriptional programs of differentially-expressed
genes, and aided in relating the transcriptional changes to phenotypic
characterization. Recently, Senger developed a cDNA
microarray platform for C. botulinum Hall A strain, and automated
cDNA microarray design and enabled multi-genome
arrays.
Senger received his bachelor’s of science degree in chemistry
in 1999 from Millikin University, located in Decatur, Ill.
He has completed the ChE undergraduate core-curriculum at
Colorado State University and received his master’s of science
degree from CSU in 2002. As an undergraduate, he interned
at Tate & Lyle in Decatur, and eventually led the separations
research team of the Sucralose ® Development
Group.
Senger is a member of the American
Chemical Society and the American Institute
of Chemical Engineers.
In his spare time, he enjoys mountain
biking, hiking, reading, and painting.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Cornelius
Christopher Cornelius is the associate
director for research of Virginia Tech’s
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Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS).
He will serve as chief technical officer and advisor to institute
Director Roop Mahajan, and will share responsibilities for technical
administration, setting strategic directions and allocating
resources on behalf of the institute. He is also an associate
professor of chemical engineering (ChE).
Cornelius comes to Virginia Tech from Sandia National
Laboratories (SNL), a national laboratory operated for the U.S.
Department of Energy by Sandia Corp. During his eight-year
tenure with SNL, Cornelius achieved recognition and respect
in both the industry and academic communities for excellence
in technically diverse rigorous research and publications,
teaching, and mentoring of post-doctorate, graduate, and undergraduate
students.
In his new position at Virginia Tech, Cornelius will continue
as an active researcher in synthetics and materials. His
research is focused upon the development of polymeric materials,
hybrid organic-inorganic materials, sol-gel chemistry,
and organically templated sol-gel “self-assembled” materials
within multiple research areas. Current research areas involve
the development of membrane materials for gas separations,
proton exchange membranes for hydrogen and methanol fuel
cells, anion-exchange membranes for water electrolysis, and
proton and anion exchange membranes for water desalination
via electro-dialysis, reverse osmosis, and alkaline fuel cells.
His research areas include polymer membranes and
hydrocarbon ionomers for fuel cells, water desalination via
reverse-osmosis and electro-dialysis, hydrogen production via
alkaline electrolysis, optical coatings for solar cells via sol-gel
chemistry, and gas separations with polymer, organic-inorganic
polymer composites, and surfactant-templated micro-porous
glasses. His overall research interest is in the study of the
interrelationships of structure, property, and function of polymers,
self-assembled materials, and hybrid organic-inorganic
materials.
His research has been supported by more than $16 million
in competitive research awards, and he has three awarded patents,
and two patents pending — all in the past seven years.
These research activities have resulted in numerous collaborations
with industry, other national laboratories, the National
Research Council of Canada, and university faculty throughout
the nation.
Prior to his position at Sandia Laboratories, Cornelius
worked in industry. He managed and set up experiments at a
pilot plant for Dow Chemical for the creation of Insite® metallocene
based polyolefins and EPDM elastomers that were used
as validation materials for the creation of Dupont Dow Elastomers.
At 3M he was in charge of the manufacture of three
product lines of non-woven filtration media.
Cornelius earned a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in ChE
from Virginia Tech in 2000 and in 1998, respectively. He received
a bachelor’s degree in ChE from Montana State University
in 1994. He has served as a member of the American
Indian Science Engineering Society, an associate member of
the American Chemical Society Committee on Minority Affairs,
and as outreach co-chair for the American Indian Outreach
Committee at Sandia National Laboratories. Additionally, he
has served as adjunct professor in the chemistry department
at Clemson University and in the ChE department at the University
of New Mexico, teaching and mentoring Ph.D. students.
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William A. Ducker is returning to
Virginia Tech after spending the past three
years as a professor and ARC Federation
Fellow at the Department of Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering, University of
Melbourne, Australia.
Ducker had spent seven years in
Virginia Tech’s Department of Chemistry,
starting as an assistant professor in 1998.
He was promoted to full professor within
Ducker
five years, and left in 2005 for the Australian
fellowship. He spent 1994 through 1997 as a lecturer, and
then tenured lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at the
University of Otago, New Zealand.
Ducker earned his Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1992 at
the Australian National University of Canberra, Australia. While
he was earning his doctorate, he spent time as a visiting scientist
in materials science at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center
in New York. He also acted as a consultant to Rohm and Haas
of Australia. After he received his doctorate he became a
postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Santa
Barbara’s Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering
for two years.
He earned his bachelor’s degree with honors in 1986, also
from the Australian National University.
Ducker’s field of specialization is in surface chemistry,
concentrating on surface forces, surface organization, atomic
force microscopy, stability of colloids, surfactants, and nanolithography.
He developed an enzymatic nanolithography
method and a procedure for measuring the forces on colloidal
particles. He contributed to the understanding of the role of
dynamic adsorption in colloidal stability, the elucidation of the
structure and forces occurring in surface aggregates of surfactant
molecules, and the accurate measurement of lubrication
forces in aqueous solution.
The holder of two patents, he has more than 3,000 citations
credited to his work.
He has served as a referee for journal articles submitted
to Nature, Science, Journal of the American Chemical Society,
Journal of Physical Chemistry, Langmuir, Colloiads and Surfaces,
Thin Solid Films, Review of Scientific Instruments, Journal
of Colloid and Interface Science, Analytical Chemistry, and
Chemical Physics Letters.
He has reviewed proposals for the National Science Foundation,
Australian Research Council, Research Corporation,
Petroleum Research Fund, Cottrell College Science Awards,
Swiss Federal Research Grants, Australian Research Council.
CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
Amy Pruden joins the Virginia Tech engineering faculty
from her position as an assistant professor
of civil and environmental engineering
(CEE) at Colorado State University (CSU)
where she has been since 2002. She will
start as an associate professor of CEE.
Pruden is a 2007 Presidential Early
Career Award in Science and Engineering
(PECASE) recipient and a 2006 CAREER
Award winner, both National Science Foundation
honors.
Pruden
As part of her CAREER award, Pruden
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initiated a mentoring program: Mentoring Engineering Research
in Genomics and the Environment (MERGE). In this
program, all students are expected to be both mentors and
mentees. This includes undergraduates, who are mentored
by the graduate students, but also play a role in mentoring by
helping with K-12 activities. Students are also required to give
a formal presentation of their research to the MERGE participants.
The overall goal of the program is to “bring together”
individuals to help develop leadership skills in engineering
research through applying biotechnology to solving important
environmental problems.
Pruden has also served as the advisor to the CSU chapter
of the Environmental Engineering Society, helping to establish
the 1st Annual Rocky Mountain Regional Water Treatment
Competition in April, 2008.
Her most recent research projects are focused on: the
quantification and source-tracking of antibiotic resistance
genes as emerging environmental pollutants; the role of animal
waste management in minimizing the impacts of agricultural
antibiotics to the environment; bioremediation of acid mine
drainage using passive sulfate-reducing permeable reactive
zones; and advancing genome-enabled tools for guiding inoculum
design in engineered treatment systems.
Additional honors she has received include: the 2006 Editor’s
Choice Award (second runner up) for her paper published
in Environmental Science and Technology (second runner up)
and write-ups of her work in Science News, Scientific American
and Discover magazines. At CSU, she received a Faculty
Award for Excellence in Research in CE in 2006 and two
Globe Awards for Contribution to Internationalization of CSU.
She earned her doctorate in environmental science from
the University of Cincinnati in 2002. As a graduate student,
she received the John David Eye Most Outstanding First-year
Graduate Student Award from its CEE department in 1999 and
was named the Most Outstanding Student in Overall Achievement
in 1997 from the Biological Sciences Department. She is
a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
She also earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from the
University of Cincinnati in 1997 and was the recipient of the
prestigious C-Ring Award, which is a university-wide distinction
given each year to the most outstanding female of the
graduating class. She held an undergraduate research fellowship
in 1996 from NSF.
Pruden is a member of the following professional societies:
Association of Environmental Engineering and Science
Professors, International Society for Microbial Ecology, International
Water Association, Water Environment Federation,
and American Society for Microbiology.
Russell A. Green returns to Virginia Tech after spending
the past seven years at the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor, first as an assistant
professor and then as an associate professor
in its Civil and Environmental Engineering
(CEE) Department. Green earned his
doctorate at Virginia Tech in 2001 as a
student of James K. Mitchell, a member of
both the National Academy of Engineering
and the National Academy of Science.
At Michigan, Green taught undergraduate
and graduate courses in Green
geotechnical
10

engineering. He also established a very active research group,
primarily working on central and eastern earthquake engineering
issues. His research interests include: paleoliquefaction
analyses; seismic hazard analyses; selection and/or scaling of
acceleration time histories for engineering use; site response
analyses; liquefaction evaluation; soil improvement; in-situ
characterization of soil properties; dynamic soil-structure-interaction,
to include the influence of the structure on liquefaction
potential.
From 1992 until 1997 Green served as an earthquake engineer
with the U.S. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board,
Washington, D.C. He performed safety reviews of the Department
of Energy’s defense nuclear facilities. At the Savannah
River Site, S.C., he conducted seismic design review of the
Defense Waste Processing Facility, developed design ground
motions, and conducted liquefaction evaluation of foundation
soil at the Replacement Tritium Facility. At the Idaho National
Engineering Laboratory, he analyzed the dynamic soil-structure-interaction
analysis of its Spent Fuel Storage Facility. At
the Los Alamos National Engineering Laboratory, N.M., he
performed a geological study to determine the presence of
faults. And, he conducted a seismic design review of the Waste
Encapsulation Storage Facility at the Hanford Site, Wa.
From 1994 until 1995 he was also a visiting research engineer
for the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station
of Vicksburg, Miss.
Among his honors and awards, he received a National Science
Foundation CAREER Award in 2006 to research procedures
for determining performance based design parameters
in regions of low-to-moderate seismicity using paleoseismic
techniques. He was a Via Scholar while a Ph.D. student at Virginia
Tech. He is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi, Tau Beta Pi,
and Chi Epsilon Academic Honor Societies and the Sigma Xi
Scientific Research Society.
He has received several teaching honors including: the
2006-07 James M. Robbins Excellence in Teaching Award,
Great Lakes District of Chi Epsilon, and the 2005-06 Professor
of the Year Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers’
(ASCE) student chapter at the University of Michigan.
He is a member of ASCE, the Geo-Institute of ASCE, the
International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical
Engineering, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute,
the U.S. Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and
Research, the Seismological Society of America, the National
Earthquake Engineering Simulation Consortium, and the
American Society of Engineering Education.
Green served on active duty in the U.S. Marines Corps
from 1984 until 1988, serving in the U.S. and in Japan and being
honorably discharged at the rank of sergeant.
He earned his master’s in CE from the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign in 1994 and his
bachelor’s degree in CE from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in 1992.
Hester
Erich Hester received his doctorate in
ecology from the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill in 2008. He earned his
master’s degree in civil and environmental
engineering from Stanford University in
1998, and his bachelor’s degree in biology
from Dartmouth College in 1992. While pur-
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suing his doctorate, Hester was an Environmental Protection
Agency STAR Graduate Fellow for two years. He also held a
UNC Kenan Fellowship for four years at UNC.
He has professional experience at four companies. He
served as a civil engineer at Herrera Environmental Consultants
of Seattle, Wash. (2002-2003), Philip Williams and Associates
of San Francisco (2001-2002), and LFR of Emeryville,
Ca. (1998-2001). He also served as a staff scientist at Ecology
and Environment, Inc., of San Francisco from 1993 until 1995.
His varied work included performing hydrologic, hydraulic
and geomorphic analysis and design for stream and wetland
ecological habitat restoration and water resources projects.
He also performed analytical and numerical modeling of water
movement and chemical migration in groundwater, surface
water, and ambient air for soil and groundwater contaminant
remediation projects. He is a registered Professional Engineer
in Washington State.
His research interests focus on how hydrology, hydraulics,
and geomorphology influence ecological health in streams,
rivers, and wetlands. His goal is to advance process-based
knowledge to allow better informed land use planning, ecological
restoration design, and preservation of aquatic ecosystems.
He is particularly interested in how complexity and heterogeneity
in physical structure (bathymetry, topography,
substrate composition, large woody debris, floodplain forest
patterns) affect water exchange among channel, floodplain,
and hyporheic environments, and how this affects ecologically
relevant properties and processes like temperature, flow and
retention of water, and biogeochemical cycling.
While stresses due to urbanization, agriculture, forestry,
and resource extraction are substantial, he is becoming increasingly
convinced that climate change is one of the biggest
challenges from the scientific and landscape management
perspective. As a result, he is also interested in how climate
change will alter the quantity, timing, and temperature of hydrologic
flows through river and wetland systems; how such
altered hydrology will influence aquatic ecosystems; and how
humans can use knowledge of relevant hydrological and ecological
processes to help minimize the ultimate ecological
impact of climate change and ease the transition to this new
ecological state.
Cristopher Dennis Moen received
his doctorate in civil engineering (CE) from
Johns Hopkins University in 2008. His current
research focus is structural stability,
and specifically the behavior of cold-formed
steel structural members. Cold-formed
steel (CFS) is a popular construction
material in low and mid-rise commercial
and residential construction because it
is strong, light, and at low risk for termite
Moen
damage. CFS structural members are efficient
because they gain their strength and stiffness through
their shape, rather than added mass.
At Hopkins, Moen developed a general design framework
for cold-formed steel structural members with holes through
research sponsored by the American Iron and Steel Institute.
Holes are often provided in CFS beams and columns to accommodate
plumbing, heating, and electrical conduits in the
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walls and ceilings of buildings. To develop the method, he studied
the influence of holes on the elastic stability and strength
of these thin-walled structures with finite element computer
simulations and experiments. When first arriving at Hopkins,
he also conducted structural dynamics research where he
worked to advance the analytical methods used to quantify
inherent damping in structures (for example, microcracking in
concrete and sliding of steel connections). In 2008, Moen was
awarded the Hopkins Civil Engineering Graduate Student Service
Award.
Prior to enrollment at Hopkins in 2004, Moen was employed
as a structural engineer for eight years, specializing in
bridge design and construction. While at Parsons Corporation
in Baltimore, Md., he served as a senior design team member
on the 2008 ASCE Opal Award-winning Woodrow Wilson
Bridge project crossing the Potomac River. He was primarily
involved in the design, detailing, and construction engineering
of the precast post-tensioned concrete V-piers and steel plate
girder superstructure. From 1997 until 2002, Moen worked as a
senior bridge designer for J. Muller International in New York,
N.Y., where he specialized in the design and construction of
prestressed concrete bridges. He is currently a registered Professional
Engineer in Virginia and Maryland.
Moen received his bachelor’s degree (1995) and master’s
degree (1997) in CE from the University of Virginia (UVA).
While at UVA, Moen was inducted into the national civil engineering
honor society Chi Epsilon, and received the 1995
Louis T. Rader Award for his outstanding academic ability and
service to his department. From 1993 to 1997, Moen conducted
high-performance concrete research at the Virginia Transportation
Research Council, including the development of new
types of fiber-reinforced concrete which were used to repair
bridge decks and pavement on interstates in Virginia.
In addition to his research and work experience, Moen has
been active in professional and community service for over 15
years. He served as the ASCE student chapter president at
UVA in 1994, as president of the ASCE Metropolitan Section
Younger Member Forum in New York City in 2000, and was
one of the founding members of the Maryland chapter of the
ASCE Structural Engineering Institute (SEI). He also served
eight years as a regional coordinator of the National Engineers’
Week Future City Competition ( www.futurecity.org ), where
teams of three middle school students design a city in the future
with the help of their teacher and an engineer mentor.
Glenn E. Moglen joined the Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering
(CEE) at the University of Maryland
as an assistant professor in 1996. He was
promoted to associate professor in 2002,
and now, as a new faculty member at Virginia
Tech, he will become a full professor,
working at the University’s Northern Capital
Region office.
Moglen, who holds his Ph.D. in CEE
Moglen
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
was a member of the University of Maryland’s Academy
for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He was the
2001 recipient of the Maryland section of the American Society
of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Outstanding Educator of the
Year award. In 2002 he received the E. Robert Kent Teaching
13

Award from the University of Maryland. He earned his department’s
Teaching Award for Excellence twice in his 12 years at
Maryland.
Moglen is an internationally recognized expert on urban
hydrology-geographic information systems (GIS) applications.
At Maryland he held the position of associate research
scientist at the National Center for Smart Growth Research
and Education. He is particularly known for his interests in
methods used to quantify impervious surfaces and to track
effects of historical land use change on hydrologic indicators.
He has developed a GIS-based software program that is used
operationally by state, county, and local agencies as well as
private engineering consulting firms throughout Maryland and
Delaware. The program is the required analysis tool for all engineering
projects used for flood studies submitted for review
in Maryland.
He has published over 30 papers in highly-rated archival
journals and five book chapters. He has also edited one book
on watershed management.
He is an associate editor for the ASCE’s Journal of Hydrologic
Engineering and held a similar position with AGU’s Water
Resources Research in 2001-02. He is currently organizing a
special issue of ASCE’s Journal of Hydrologic Engineering on
hydrologic impacts of imperviousness. He is the vice-chair of
the ASCE Watershed Management Technical Committee and
will become the chair in the fall. He has served as the 2005
conference chair of the ASCE Specialty Conference on Watershed
Management and as the editor of the book/proceedings
resulting from this conference. He was a panel member on a
National Academy of Sciences committee to review the National
Weather Service’s AHPS program.
Moglen spent a one-year sabbatical in the Office of Surface
Water at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., during
the 2003-04 academic year. He also spent approximately
one year as a visiting research scientist at the National Weather
Service, NOAA, in Silver Spring, Md., during 1995-96 before
joining the University of Maryland.
Moglen earned his master’s degree in CE from Colorado
State University in 1989, and his bachelor’s degree in CE from
the University of Maryland in 1987.
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Barbara G. Ryder, professor of computer
science at Rutgers, The State University
of New Jersey, joins the computer
science faculty at Virginia Tech as the new
department head. She is the first woman to
serve as a department head in the history
of the nationally ranked College of Engineering,
and she holds its J. Byron Maupin
Professorship.
Ryder received her Ph.D. degree in CS
Ryder
at Rutgers in 1982, and immediately was
offered her first full-time faculty position on its CS faculty. She
previously worked in the 1970s at AT&T Bell Laboratories in
Murray Hill, N.J. Ryder’s research interests focus on static and
dynamic program analyses to improve the software quality of
industrial-strength object-oriented systems, for use in practical
software tools.
She has had stints as a visiting researcher at IBM’s T.J.
Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, N.Y., the L’Université
14

Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France, and the Ecole Normale Supériere,
Paris, France. She was a visiting associate professor
of CS at Princeton University during 1993-94.
Ryder became a Fellow of the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM), the premier CS professional society, in
1998. She was selected as a Computing Research Association
Committee on the Status of Women’s Distinguished Professor
in 2004 and received the ACM Special Interest Group on
Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) Distinguished Service
Award in 2001. She also was voted Professor of the Year for
Excellence in Teaching by the Rutgers CS Graduate Student
Society in 2003, received a Leader in Diversity Award
at Rutgers in 2006, and a Graduate Teaching Award from
Rutgers Graduate School in 2007.
Ryder has been an active leader in ACM, serving as an
ACM Council member from 2000 to 2008, a member of the
ACM SIGPLAN Executive Committee from 1989 to 1999, and
as SIGPLAN chair from 1995 to 1997. In 2008 she was elected
ACM Secretary-Treasurer. She was the chair of the Federated
Computing Research Conference in 2003. Ryder received an
ACM Presidential Award in 2008 for her devoted efforts to the
organization. ACM also cited Ryder as “a source of inspiration
to women in the computing field, dedicating her services
in their support, among them, serving on the Athena Lecturer
Award Committee.”
Ryder has served as a member of the Board of Directors
of the Computer Research Association (1998 to 2001).
Currently, she is an editorial board member of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Transactions on Software
Engineering, and Software, Practice and Experience.
Ryder also has served on many program and conference
committees, especially those sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN
and ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering.
She has been a panelist in the CRA Workshops on Academic
Careers for Women, and the New Software Engineering Faculty
Symposia held at the International Conference on Software
Engineering.
Ryder earned her bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in
applied mathematics from Brown University in 1969. In 1971
Stanford University awarded her a master’s degree in CS.
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
For the past five years, until he joined
the Virginia Tech faculty in March of 2008,
Joseph Baker served as a senior staff
scientist at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)
Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). For the
two prior years, he was a post-doctoral research
fellow at APL.
Baker earned his Ph.D. in atmospheric
and space sciences in 2001 at the University
of Michigan. His adviser at the time, C.
Baker
Robert Clauer, has also since joined the
Virginia Tech faculty, and both are members of the Center for
Space Science and Engineering Research or Space@VT.
Baker earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1992
from the University of New England, Australia. He taught physics
and mathematics at an international school, Mombasa
Academy, in Mombasa, Kenya in 1994 and 1995.
His major research focus is space physics with a particular
emphasis on understanding how the solar wind and interplan-
15

etary magnetic field control ionospheric plasma convection
at middle to high latitudes. For his Ph.D. dissertation he used
spacecraft auroral images and data assimilation techniques
with ground-based magnetometers to study geomagnetic activity
at high latitudes. He also participated in yearly trips to the
Greenland icecap to install and maintain magnetometer instrumentation.
As a post-doctoral fellow at the APL, he began working
with the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN).
Two topics he has used SuperDARN data to study are: heating
of the upper atmosphere due to ionospheric currents; and
convection at middle latitudes associated with magnetic storms
and sub-auroral processes. He has also compared
SuperDARN data with spacecraft measurements to better
understand the electrical connectivity between the magnetosphere
and ionosphere along magnetic field lines.
Among his honors, Baker was given the 2004 JHU APL
Publication Award. He received first class honors in 1993 from
the University of New England. He also won the Australian
Institute of Physics NSW Branch Prize the same year. He is a
member of the American Geophysical Union.
Marius Orlowski is the Virginia
Microelectronics Consortium (VMEC)
Chair at Virginia Tech and a professor of
the Bradley Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering. Orlowski brings to
Virginia Tech extensive industry experience
coupled with an outstanding publication
record, and an exciting vision for future
university-based research in the microelectronics
field.
Orlowski
Orlowski earned all three of his degrees
from Tuebingen University in Germany where he was
also a member of the faculty. His master’s degree was in experimental
physics and his Ph.D. was in theoretical nuclear
physics in 1976 and in 1979, respectively. He started as an
assistant professor for theoretical physics at Tuebingen University
in 1979, became a visiting scholar at Stanford University in
1981, and a staff member of the Physics Department at Purdue
University in 1982.
From 1984 to 1989 he was with Siemens Semiconductor
Research Laboratories in Munich and in 1989 he joined
Motorola’s Advanced Products Research and Development
Laboratory in Austin, Texas. From 1995 to 1998 he was the
director of Motorola’s Research Laboratory in Moscow, Russia.
In 2000, he became the Fellow of Technical Staff at Motorola.
From 2006 to 2007 he was a co-director at the Crolles Alliance
Research Center in Grenoble, France and responsible for the
development of the fully depleted SOI and multi-channel devices
as well as of the back-end modules.
Orlowski has more than 150 publications in prestigious
scientific journals and conference proceedings. He has
presented invited/keynote talks at a score of premier conferences.
He has 59 patents issued and 28 pending. His present
research interests include exploration of nano-CMOS devices
and the leverage of advanced wafer substrates.
Orlowski received the Freescale Master Innovator Award
and the Platinum Silver Quill (publication) Award by Motorola.
He has also been recognized with a Distinguished Innovator
Award, a Fellow of Technical Staff at Motorola/Freescale, and
16

as an Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
Fellow for contributions to the modeling of MOSFET devices
and technology. He has made significant contributions to understanding
the physics of semiconductor devices as Moore’s
Law has advanced.
The Virginia Microelectronics Consortium (VMEC) is a
group of colleges and universities including George Mason
University, Old Dominion University, the University of Virginia,
Virginia Tech, and the College of William and Mary that was
created in 1996 to serve the microelectronics industry in the
commonwealth and to exploit the state’s diverse industry and
educational microelectronics resources for mutual benefit. The
primary purpose is to facilitate industry-academic partnerships
that can address the educational, training, and research needs
of Virginia’s microelectronics industry and to contribute to the
development of Virginia as a location of choice for the industry.
J. Michael Ruohoniemi joins the
Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering as an associate professor
and a member of the Center for Space
Science and Engineering Research or
Space@VT.
Ruohoniemi had been at Johns Hopkins
University (JHU) Applied Physics
Laboratory (APL) since 1986. He started
Ruohoniemi
as a post-doctoral research fellow, was
promoted to senior staff physicist in 1989,
and from 2001-08, he served as a principal professional staff
physicist.
He was a member of the JHU/APL team lead by Raymond
A. Greenwald that developed the Super Dual Auroral Radar
Network (SuperDARN) concept into an international collaboration
involving 20 HF (High Frequency) radars. He is now
the principal investigator of the National Science Foundation
funded project. The SuperDARN project has moved to Virginia
Tech. SuperDARN consists of chains of radars distributed in
both hemispheres that study the earth’s upper atmosphere,
ionosphere, and connections with Earth’s near-space environment.
Ruohoniemi supervised the construction of SuperDARN
radars at sites in Kapuskasing, Ontario, and Wallops, Virginia
while at JHU/APL. Most recently, he directed the build of a new
radar at Blackstone, Va., as a joint project of VT, JHU/APL, and
the Leicester University (UK).
Ruohoniemi has published extensively on topics in space
physics that include the dynamics of ionospheric convection,
space weather, plasma irregularities, magnetic pulsations,
atmospheric gravity waves, and neutral winds. He is the originator
of the assimilative code for mapping the global pattern of
ionospheric plasma convection using SuperDARN radar data.
While at JHU/APL he mentored young scientists in the interpretation
and application of HF radar data.
He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and
the Union Radio Scientifique International.
In 1986, he received two bachelor’s degrees from the University
of King’s College and Dalhousie University located in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. The major degree was awarded in physics
and mathematics and the minor in Russian. He received
the Governor General’s Gold medal (for highest academic
standing) from the University of King’s College. He earned his
17

doctorate in physics in 1986 from the University of Western
Ontario in London, Ontario. Ruohoniemi is the recipient of publication
awards and a NASA group achievement award.
ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Holly Matusovich will earn her Ph.D.
in engineering education from Purdue
University in December 2008 and then join
the Virginia Tech Department of Engineering
Education. Her research incorporates
both qualitative and quantitative methods
to advance the understanding of the undergraduate
engineering student experience.
She particularly focuses on how this experience
relates to students’ motivational characteristics,
identity, learning experiences,
Matusovich
and conceptual understanding. Her current research is part
of the Academic Pathways Study conducted by the Center for
Advancement of Engineering Education.
Matusovich earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical
engineering in 1994 from Cornell University. She received her
master’s degree in materials science engineering in 1999 from
the University of Connecticut.
Her work experience includes five years at SCI-TECH,
Inc., of Wethersfield, Conn., following the receipt of her undergraduate
degree. As a consulting engineer she managed a
number of environmental projects. She then returned to school
and while working on her master’s degree, investigated steel
corrosion rates as a function of time and environment, and examined
the effect of shot preening parameters on fatigue rate.
After earning her master’s degree she worked for Alcoa’s
Lafayette, Ind., aerospace extrusion operation in various
capacities for seven years. Among them, she was a project
launch manager working in close cooperation with major aircraft
companies to transition new products from application
concept to full-scale production. She managed a major inventory
control project, consolidating the number of ingot plant
products by 25 percent. She was also the quality and technical
lead for restarting Alcoa’s aluminum aerospace extrusion plant
in Halethorpe, Md.
Among her honors, Matusovich received Purdue University’s
Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship for 2008. She was also
sponsored by the National Science Foundation as a student
representative to the Global Student Forum and Colloquium,
associated with the American Society for Engineering Education
(ASEE) Global Colloquium on Engineering Education in
2007.
She is a member of ASEE and the American Educational
Research Association.
ENGINEERING SCIENCE AND
MECHANICS
Staples
Anne E. Staples has spent the past
two years as a post-doctoral researcher at
the Laboratory for Computational Physics
and Fluid Dynamics at the Naval Research
Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C. At
NRL she held a National Research Council
Postdoctoral Research Associateship.
At NRL she focused on three major
18

esearch areas. She derived the pulsed flow equations, partial
differential equations that model physiological systems as fluid
flows. She built a model of coupled respiratory and circulatory
systems in the human body based on the pulsed flow equations.
And she was involved in developing the “computational
man,” a modular multi-scale computational model for a biological
organism represented as a network of coupled physiological
systems.
Staples earned her graduate degrees at Princeton University.
She earned a master of engineering degree in 2001 and a
master of arts degree in 2005. One year later, she was awarded
her doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering.
As a graduate student, Staples received a number of
awards and honors. Among them, she earned Princeton’s
2004 E-Council Excellence in Teaching Award. She held the
University’s 2003-04 Forbes College Graduate Fellowship, the
2003 Larisse Rosentweig Klein Memorial Award for excellence
in doctoral research, the 2002 Amelia Earhart Fellowship from
Zonta International, and a 2000 Princeton University Fellowship.
Staples performed her undergraduate work in mechanical
and aerospace engineering at Cornell University, earning her
bachelor’s degree in 2000. At Cornell, she held the 1998-99
Walter H. Rudolph Memorial Scholarship and a 1999 GE Faculty
for the Future Fellowship.
Staples’ research interests are in the following areas: bioengineering,
computational biology and physiology, coupled
physiological systems approaches to biology; computational
fluid dynamics, modeling physiological systems in biological
organisms as gas or liquid flows; multi-scale methods, multiscale
representations of physiological systems; dynamical systems
and mathematical modeling, and parallel computing.
She has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
At Princeton, she was a session chair of the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Regional Student
Conference.
INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
Jaime Camelio obtained a Ph.D. in
mechanical engineering (ME) and a M.S. in
industrial and operations engineering from
the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor
in 2002. Previously, he received his B.S.
and M.S. in ME from the Pontificia Universidad
Catolica de Chile in 1994 and 1995,
respectively.
At UM, he served as a graduate research
assistant in the ME department. After
graduation, Camelio remained at UM to
Camelio
become a post-doctoral research fellow in the ME department.
After a year, he was promoted to an assistant research scientist,
serving as the leader on a project with General Motors
(GM) as part of the UM-GM Collaborative Research Lab. The
project focused on variation propagation modeling for compliant
assembly lines with a particular emphasis in the impact of
new materials such as aluminum.
In 2004, he became a consultant in the Automotive/Operations
Practice at A.T. Kearney, Inc. in its Southfield, Mi., office.
He conducted management/engineering consulting, with an
emphasis on operations management, product development,
product commonality, and design for cost reduction.
19

In the fall of 2005, he joined the Department of Mechanical
Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Technological
University as an assistant professor, staying there for three
years until he joined the Virginia Tech faculty. His research
interests are in design and analysis of manufacturing systems.
He is particularly interested in decision making under uncertainty,
data mining and statistical learning applications in production
systems, self-healing manufacturing systems, design
and analysis of value recovery operations, and micro-forming
processes.
Among his honors, he received the Society of Manufacturing
Engineering’s (SME) 2007 Outstanding Young Manufacturing
Engineering Award. In 2001, he received the Best Paper
Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME) Design Engineering Technical Conference. He also
was honored with the Best Student in ME Award from the
Colegio de Ingenieros de Chile in 1996.
Camelio is a member of ASME, SME, the Institute for
Operations Research and the Management Sciences, and the
Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.
Christian Wernz received his doctorate
in industrial engineering and operations
research in 2008 from the University of
Massachusetts Amherst.
For the past five years, as he pursued
his doctorate, he served as a research assistant
in the University’s Consortium for
Distribute Decision Making. His research
focuses on the multi-scale analysis and
modeling of complex systems, stochastic
Wernz
processes and probability theory, decision
theory, game theory and information science. The applications
of his theoretical work are in manufacturing systems, management
systems engineering, service operations, environmental
engineering, technology management, homeland security, and
supply chain networks.
Among his awards and scholarships as a doctoral student,
he received the 2006-07 Graduate School Fellowship for Outstanding
Doctoral Students, the 2004-05 Eugene M. Isenberg
Award for Entrepreneurship and Technology Management,
Hamburg, Germany’s 2003-04 Research Scholarship for Post
Graduate Research, and he was a German National Academic
Foundation Fellow from 2000-04.
Wernz received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in
industrial engineering and business administration from the
University of Karlsruhe, Germany in 1999 and in 2003, respectively.
While he was a master’s student, he participated
in an exchange program at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst.
His teaching interests are in management systems theory,
economic decision making, production planning and control,
system and processes modeling, service operations, technology
management, and supply chain management.
As an engineering student, he worked with various industries
in an IE capacity. He had stints with BorgWarner of
Heidelberg, Germany, McKinsey and Company of Frankfurt,
Germany, Hardigg Industries of South Deerfield, Ma., and
Loyalty-Partner and BMW, both of Munich, Germany. He also
interned at the Max-Planck Institute for Physics in Heidelberg.
Wernz was an integral member of the University of Mas-
20

sachusetts Amherst Student Chapter of the Institute of Operations
Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS),
serving as a member, treasurer, and president. He received
its 2007 Outstanding Student Service Award and was elected
honorary member in 2008., His chapter received the 2007
Student Chapter Annual Award Summa Cum Laude, the highest
distinction recognizing the chapter’s outstanding achievements.
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Bahareh Behkam earned her bachelor’s
degree from Sharif University of Technology
(Iran), and her master’s and Ph.D.
degrees from Carnegie Mellon University,
all in mechanical engineering (ME). Prior to
joining Virginia Tech, she was a post-doctoral
research scholar in the NanoRobotics
Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon.
During her graduate and post-doctoral
work, she has developed expertise in biologically
integrated micro-robotics, micro-
Behkam
hydrodynamics, micro/nanoelectromechanical systems
(M/NEMS) design and fabrication, physical chemistry of surfaces,
and microbial physiology. Her research interests include
design, modeling, and fabrication of bio-hybrid (biotic/abiotic)
micro/nano systems, biomimetic micro-robotics, miniature
medical devices for minimally invasive interventions, and biophysics
of microbial mobility and adhesion.
In her doctoral work, she mainly focused on the design
and fabrication of bio-hybrid micro/nano-engineering systems
and worked in the areas of: bacterial actuation of swimming
micro-robots; chemical based motion control of such micro-robots;
and modeling and characterization of biomimetic flagellar
propulsion for swimming micro-robots. The unique advantages
of such robots include the ability to access small spaces, and
the potential to be employed in large numbers as inexpensive
agents of distributed systems for swarm robotic applications.
Due to these characteristics, micro-robots are envisioned to
impact a diverse range of applications, including minimally invasive
diagnosis and localized treatment of diseases, environmental
monitoring, and homeland security. She was awarded
the Dowd-ICES fellowship at Carnegie Mellon for her doctoral
research.
Behkam’s future research plans center on advancing the
use of cells as machines. She intends to accomplish this by
conducting basic research in understanding the complex behavior
of biological systems using micro/nano-manipulation
techniques, and applying the findings to address challenges
in design and fabrication of bio-hybrid micro/nano-engineered
systems. Her ultimate goal is to realize fully functional biohybrid
devices for a variety of applications.
Behkam is an enthusiastic mentor and takes special interest
in teaching. Besides teaching classical undergraduate
curriculum in mechanical engineering, she hopes to create
new courses relevant to her research, such as “micro/nanorobotics”
and “cellular biomechanics.” The micro/nano-robotics
class would cover micro/nanoscale forces and phenomena,
imaging and manipulation tools, small-scale actuators, sensors,
mechanisms, nanomaterials, and micro-robotic design.
The cellular biomechanics class would introduce engineering
students to the basics of biochemistry, biomotors, intra-cellular
21

dynamics, mechanochemical coupling phenomena within the
cells, and the techniques that researchers use to study them.
Behkam brings with her an accomplished and varied
background in engineering; both in academia and industry.
While working on her master’s degree, she characterized the
thermal transport properties of giant magnetoresistive (GMR)
head constituents using electrical resistance thermometry
techniques. Her master’s work was recognized for excellence
and was adjudged as the best poster at Carnegie Mellon’s
annual Bennett Conference in 2002. For several years, she
was a research engineer at Iran Center of Industrial Research
and Development in Tehran, where she worked on developing
propriety software for design and testing of automotive break
systems.
Among her publications, she is the co-author of a book
chapter on “Bacteria Integrated Swimming Micro-robots” in 50
Years of AI. Her research work in bacterial propulsion of swimming
micro-robots has been featured in New Scientist, Discovery
News, and Discovery Science Channel.
She has served as a reviewer for the IEEE Transactions
on Robotics, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology,
IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics
and Biomechatronics, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems, and for the IEEE Conference
on Automation Science and Engineering.
Tomonari Furukawa received his
bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering
(ME) from Waseda University, Japan,
in 1990, his master’s in mechatronic engineering
from the University of Sydney,
Australia in 1993, and his Ph.D. in quantum
engineering and systems science from the
University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1996.
He remained at the University of Tokyo
after receiving his doctorate. He was a research
associate from 1995 until 1997, and
Furukawa
then a lecturer from 1997 until 2000. In 2000, Furukawa moved
to the University of Sydney where he remained for two years
as a U2000 research fellow. In 2002 he moved to the School of
Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of
New South Wales (UNSW) working as a lecturer and became
a senior lecturer in 2004.
Furukawa’s research focuses on inverse analysis and optimization
in robotics and computational mechanics. At UNSW
he was Director of the Computational Mechanics and Robotics
Laboratory, supervising various research projects in areas including
cooperative control of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV),
micro UAVs, composite materials characterization, damage
identification and research into flapping wings.
He has held a visiting research fellow appointment with
the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney,
since 2002. For two months in 2003 he was a visiting scholar
at Tohoku University’s Department of Aerospace Engineering.
For six months in 2006 he was a visiting fellow at the Center of
Computational Material Science, Naval Research Laboratory,
Washington D.C.
Among his awards, he received the Japan Society of
Mechanical Engineers Young Investigator Award for 2000. In
2004, he earned the Asian-Pacific Association on Computational
Mechanics’ Young Investigator Award for Computational
22

Mechanics. That same year he also received the International
Association on Computational Mechanics Young Investigator
Award for Computational Mechanics.
He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers, American Society for Mechanical Engineers, and
the Robotics Society of Japan.
He has published over 200 technical papers.
Rolf Mueller has held academic posts
around the world. He was a post-doctoral
fellow at Yale University’s Department of
Electrical Engineering from 1998-2000. He
became a visiting researcher at the University
of Edinburgh’s Division of Informatics
for a brief period until he started the Biosonar
Laboratory at Germany’s University of
Tuebingen’s Department of Animal Physiology
where he spent three years.
Mueller
Mueller became an assistant professor
at The Maersk Institute at the University of Southern Denmark
from 2003 until 2005. He received full professor status with his
move to the School of Physics at Shandong University, China.
While he held this position, he was also appointed as visiting
research professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of
New York. He has held this dual position since March of 2007.
Among his honors, Mueller was recently nominated for a
Taishan Scholar endowed professorship, received a Top Ten
Scholars Award from Shandong University in 2006, Tuebingen
University’s 1999 Dissertation Award, and held a NATO Post-
Doctoral Fellowship from 1998 until 2000. His work has been
featured by international media such as Nature, Physics Today,
Financial Times, Popular Science, and the BBC.
He has a patent allowed for issuance on a method for frequency-driven
generation of a multi-resolution decomposition
of the input to wave-based sensing arrays.
Mueller received all three of his degrees from the University
of Tuebingen. He earned his bachelor’s in biology in
1992, his master’s in neuroscience, genetics, and electronics
in 1995, and his doctorate summa cum laude in animal physiology
in 1998.
His research interests are in biomimetic technology and
neuromorphic signal processing; acoustics and computational
theory of biosonar; numerical acoustics; auditory modeling;
modeling of neural function and spike codes; sonar sensing
applications for autonomous robots; and extraction of technological
design rules from biological diversity.
The general goal of his research over the last 10 years
has been to add a new quality to the understanding of how the
most capable biological sensory systems achieve their unrivaled
performance. His recent achievements include: providing
the first physical explanation for the role of a prominent flap
seen in mammalian ears (2004); discovery of a novel helical
scan in the ear directivity of a bat (2006); discovery of frequency-selective
beam-forming by virtue of resonances in noseleaf
furrows of a bat, an entirely new bioacoustic paradigm (2006);
establishing the first immediate and quantitative characterization
of the spatial information created by a mammal’s outer
ear (2007); and providing the first physical explanation for the
function of flaps attached to noseleaves of some bat species
(2007).
Mueller’s aspiration in teaching is to bridge the gap be-
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tween disciplines, especially between biology and engineering.
MINING AND MINERALS ENGINEERING
Kray Luxbacher joins the mining and
minerals engineering (MinE) department
after receiving all three degrees from Virginia
Tech’s MinE Department. She earned
her bachelor’s degree in 2002, her master’s
in 2005, and her Ph.D. in 2008.
Luxbacher is the first tenure-track female
to join the MinE faculty.
Her doctoral research was on the inference
of stress redistribution in underground
Luxbacher
coal mines through seismic velocity tomography
for the prediction of roof failure. She explored the use of
double difference tomography and synthetic tomography. She
conducted a comparison of methods through case studies of
underground mines. Her adviser was Erik Westman.
For her master’s thesis, also with Westman, she received
the American Rock Mechanics Association’s Best Master’s
Thesis Award. She examined stress redistribution in an underground
longwall coal mine using velocity tomography, utilizing
mining induced seismicity as a source. The paper was titled
Four-Dimensional Passive Velocity Tomography of a Longwall
Panel.
As an undergraduate she identified noise in underground
coal mines that contributes to hearing loss. She also participated
in and coordinated field work at mines in Kentucky and
Virginia to record audible warnings and noise associated with
underground coal mines. She worked as a co-operative education
student for Pinnacle System, U.S. Mining Company, LLC,
of Pineville, W.Va.
Luxbacher has served as an instructor for the MinE department
teaching its ventilation engineering and mining surveying
courses since 2006.
She spent almost two years (2003-04) working as a production
foreman for Consol Energy at its Buchanan No. 1
mine at its Mavisdale, Va., location. She was accountable for
the safety and training of a crew of nine, and production on a
four-entry longwall development section using continuous miners.
She was also responsible for ventilation, roof control, and
equipment maintenance in compliance with the company policies
and state and federal laws.
In 2002, she also worked as an industrial engineer for
Consol, conducting time studies at its coal mines in Virginia
and Kentucky.
She is a member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and
Exploration.
Richard C. Benson, Dean
Virginia Tech
College of Engineering
3046 Torgersen Hall (0217)
Blacksburg, Virginia 24061
(540) 231-6641 • www.eng.vt.edu
Editor: Lynn Nystrom
Designer: David Simpkins
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