New Faces - Faculty
As some of our valued colleagues transition to retirement, we have welcomed some new faces to the Engineering and Computer Science departments. Below are the current junior and visiting faculty in the Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science departments.
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Bradford A. Bruno Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
Broadly, my area of scholarly expertise is in the thermal / fluid sciences stem of mechanical engineering, focusing on fluid mechanics. My approach to research is primarily an experimental one with some analytical and computational interests as well. The most significant thrust of my recent research efforts is in the area of Internal Combustion engines (IC engines), and especially applying experimental laser diagnostic techniques to IC engine research. Currently this branch of my work is starting to focus on the use of alternative fuels in IC engines, especially hydrogen. I am also beginning to work in the area of micro-fluidics, especially with regard to two phase flow and surface tension effects.
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Andrew J. Rapoff Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
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My research efforts are in the areas of biomimetic structures, bone mechanics, orthopedic mechanics and physical anthropology. I involve students in my research by first asking them discriminating questions: do you like to work with equations? on computers? to get your hands dirty in the lab? Their answers then indicate where they can fit in.
My teaching efforts are in the solid mechanics track in Mechanical Engineering (Particle and Rigid Body Mechanics, Strength and Advanced Strength of Materials, Design of Mechanical Systems) and in Bioengineering (Biomimetics, Soft Tissue Mechanics, Orthopedic Biomechanics).
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David Hodgson Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
My primary research area is robust and adaptive control for nonlinear systems. My current research involves combining the use of reinforcement learning techniques with robust control theory to improve the performance of HVAC equipment. I am also interested in alternative energy and plan to continue research in solar thermal applications. I teach courses in control, mechatronics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and basic mechanics. This year I will be starting a mechatronics club which will hopefully include students from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science. In addition I will be providing assistance to the newly formed Engineers Without Boarders student chapter.
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Rebecca Cortez Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
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Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct research in the areas of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology and micro- and nano-scale materials characterization. MEMS technology involves the integration of miniature mechanical structures, sensors, and electronics on a common substrate. The miniaturization of electronic and mechanical structures and devices is dependent on a fundamental understanding of the materials which comprise them. Therefore, basic research of the morphology (surface appearance) and performance characterization of these materials is paramount to their insertion in future applications. My teaching and research interests lie in materials science and engineering principles, the relevance of materials in design applications, the role of materials in microelectronic devices, materials characterization, and the general areas of fatigue and failure. I hope to share these interests through collaborative projects with Union students and other researchers.
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Ashok Ramasubramanian Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
My primary area of research in Biomechanics - the study of mechanics and material properties of biological tissues. I am particularly interested in the biomechanics of heart development in embryos. Control theory is another area in which I have substantial interest and my work often involves feedback control in a biomechanical context.
I am setting up my lab to work with chick embryos and I hope to work with undergraduate students in a project studying the biomechanics of blood vessel development.
I will be teaching Dynamic Systems (MER 322) in the Fall term. I will be teaching some mechanics classes in future terms.
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Abraham Tchako Assistant Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
My areas of research are computational solid mechanics and Spine biomechanics. I am particularly interested in cervical spine injuries due to sport activities or accidents. As a traditional mechanical engineer I am currently focusing my interest on machine Design and design to manufacture (FEM, CAD, CAM).
I am working on expanding the student machine shop to include an educational Computer Numeric Control (CNC) station. I hope to use the station with undergraduate students in projects pertaining to different manufacturing processes programming and design.
This fall term I am teaching Kinematics and Dynamics (MER 312) and I will be teaching Engineering Graphics with CAD and hands-on machine shop application (MER 101) in the spring term. The future will tell the rest of the story.
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Jennifer A. Currey Assistant Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
My research is in the area of bone healing. My primary focus is on healing around implants subjected to micromotion. The project that I am currently involved in is looking at healing around implants subjected to 150 um of axial motion. The implants are being studied in a mouse model. My particular interests in this project are the strain levels in the tissue as a result of the implant motion. This strain is believed to affect the type of tissue that is present around the implant, i.e. high strain inhibits bone formation. The strains are evaluated using finite element models that model the various implant designs and anatomical constraints (the size of the hole the implant is placed in and the distance between cortices of the bone) and material properties of the healing tissue. I am hoping to develop new models that will look at various implant surfaces and loading conditions. I am also interested in developing an iterative model where the finite element model will be adjusted based on the healing that is occurring at various time points in the study.
I will be teaching Strength of Materials and Advance Strength of Materials.
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Palma Catravas Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering |
My primary research interests center on topics at the interface of electrical engineering and music. I enjoy tackling visualization bottlenecks, with a focus on problems of interest to experimentalists, from the starting point of music visualization and sonification.
The Engineering Acoustics course continues to develop, with new projects for students on audio signal processing and musical instrument construction being added this winter in collaboration with Dianne McMullen in the Music Department. We greatly appreciate the donation of ultrasound measurement equipment from ECE alum Howard Fidel, for use with the recently added Steinway Model S in the acoustics lab.
I also particularly enjoy interacting with faculty working in the area of nanotechnology and co-teaching the Frontiers of Nanotechnology course with them.
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Shane Cotter Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering |
My research area is digital signal processing and, principally, I am interested in algorithms for pattern recognition. My past work has spanned applications in communications, speech and networking but I am currently most interested in applying digital signal processing methods in the area of biology. To this end, I am setting up a lab where students will get hands on experience in biological signal processing. Some students are already working on projects related to facial expression recognition and analyzing the colors displayed in the lizard dewlaps.
I teach the introductory course in digital logic to sophomores which focuses on logic design and assembly programming. The second course I teach is VHDL Design which builds on the introductory material and uses VHDL to design more complex digital systems. Finally, I teach a course on microcontrollers which utilizes the assembly language taught in the introductory course and also has the students work on projects for the 8051 microcontroller using C.
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Helen Hanson Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering |
My research is focused on acoustic models of speech production, and how acoustic data can be linked to higher-level representations of speech utterances. There are a few areas that would be great for student involvement: work-in-progress on speech respiration and prosody, plus upcoming projects on developmental issues (i.e. children's speech) and cross-language or second-language phenomena.
This year I'll be teaching Circuit Theory, Circuits and Systems, Communications Systems, and an upper-level elective related to speech.
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Kristina Stiegnitz Assistant Professor of Computer Science |
My research is in natural language processing, that is, I am trying to build computer programs which can interpret input and produce output in a natural language, such as English, German etc. In particular, I am interested in modeling dialog, including the non-verbal aspects that make human face-to-face communication work so well. So, I have worked on Embodied Conversational Agents, which are animated computer characters that serve as an interface to some computer program and that interact with the human user using natural language and gesture.
I am also involved in a new effort to set up a natural language generation challenge. The task of this challenge will be to build a computer system which produces natural language instructions to help a human user navigate in a 3D virtual environment. Researchers will be invited to submit systems which will then be evaluated and compared in a common 3D scenario. As a first step, there will be a competition of systems built by students in late 2008. I think it would be fun to participate in this competition with a group of students.
I will be teaching introductory computer science classes, courses on artificial intelligence and natural language processing, and courses on the theoretical foundations of computing. For example, this fall I am teaching "Theory of Computing" and in winter I am teaching "Can Computers think?", which is an introduction to computer science and programming that focuses on artificial intelligence.
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Valerie Barr Ph.D. Computer Science, Rutgers University |
My area of research is software testing, at present in the context of natural language processing systems. My goal is to develop methods for verification and validation of the subtasks and resources involved in language processing, improving on the largely black-box evaluation that is currently carried out. I am also very involved in program and curriculum development with an eye toward engaging a larger and more diverse student population in computing.
I mostly teach media computation (one of our new introductory CS courses), programming languages, software development, and artificial intelligence, as well as the introduction to Women and Gender Studies, a Scholars Seminar that focuses on Alan Turing and other scientists, and will soon be team-teaching an interdisciplinary course entitled "Identity and Technology in a Media-Saturated World".
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Aaron Cass Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
I have always been interested in the human side of computing, and my two research areas reflect this. In one area, I am investigating ways to support software design with semi-automated tools. From this I hope to learn more about what makes design successful and what doesn't work. I am doing this work with my colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, but also including students here at Union.
My other research area is usability, in which I study what makes systems usable and what makes them not usable. Professor Chris Fernandes and I, along with several students here at Union over the course of a couple of years now, have primarily been working on designing new mechanisms for the "undo" command in software applications -- designing new mechanisms that fit better with how normal users think, and evaluating those new mechanisms. Chris and I have also been teaching a Sophomore Research Seminar in which students from across the campus have designed and evaluated systems using the techniques of usability research. This course, and our research, has benefited greatly from a lab that we have outfitted using a grant from the National Science Foundation.
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