Five from College of Engineering named University Faculty Scholars

The College of Engineering at North Carolina State University was well represented on the list of 2013-14 University Faculty Scholars announced by Chancellor Randy Woodson on Nov. 22. Five faculty, or a quarter of this year’s list of scholars, are part of the College.

The recognition and reward program is part of the university’s strategic initiative to invest in and retain top faculty. It is funded by generous gifts totaling $5.7 million — $3 million from Dr. Jim Goodnight and his wife, Ann, and $2.7 million from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust.

Eligible faculty include assistant professors who have been reappointed for a second term, associate professors, and full professors within the first three years of appointment at that rank. Nominees were evaluated based on evidence of their significant achievements in scholarship, teaching and/or service appropriate to their rank and discipline. Faculty are nominated by their colleges and selected by a committee of senior faculty.

“These 20 extraordinary faculty members, who do so much to benefit North Carolinians through their teaching, research and service, are worthy recipients of this investment,” Woodson said.

College of Engineering faculty named to the list are:

Dr. Sankar Arumugam is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. He is primarily associated with the Water Resources and Environmental Engineering and Computing and Systems groups within the department.

His primary research interest is the interface of climate and water management focusing on large-scale hydroclimatology. He is interested in understanding, modeling and forecasting hydrological fluxes at large spatial scales based on land surface and climatic indices.

Arumugam received a PhD in water resources engineering from Tufts University.

Dr. Francis de los Reyes III is a professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering and an associate faculty member of microbiology and training faculty of biotechnology. He is interested in the interface between microbial ecology and environmental engineering.

De los Reyes’ research focuses on biological processes and combines modeling, bioreactor experiments and molecular microbial ecology tools addressing fundamental and practical issues in environmental biotechnology and environmental engineering. He has conducted workshops for wastewater treatment plant operators and professionals in the US and the Philippines. He has also worked on water and sanitation issues in developing countries and has collaborated on issues with the Philippines, India, China and Montenegro.

He earned a PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Albena Ivanisevic is an associate professor in the Joint NC State-UNC Department of Biomedical Engineering as well as the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Her interests include using surface techniques to immobilize bio-molecules on inorganic and tissue surfaces. Her research utilizes a broad perspective on problems in chemistry, materials and biomedical engineering and is aimed to address the need to understand how to manipulate and tailor the properties of surfaces for the fabrication of better sensor and tissue platforms.

She received a PhD in chemistry from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Greg Sawicki is an assistant professor in the Joint NC State-UNC Department of Biomedical Engineering and the director of the Human PoWeR (Physiology of Wearable Robotics) Laboratory at NC State. His research area is rehabilitation engineering and his interests include rehab robotics, bio-inspired design, locomotion neuromechanics and muscle-tendon dynamics.

The overall goal of the Human PoWeR Laboratory is to uncover fundamental principles of locomotion neuromechanics and exploit them to develop better lower-limb robotic devices to assist both healthy and impaired human locomotion.

Sawicki holds a PhD in human neuromechanics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Dr. Laurie Williams is a professor in the Department of Computer Science. Her research focuses on software security, particularly in relation to health care IT, agile software development practices and processes, software reliability, software testing and analysis, open source software development, and broadening participation and increasing retention in computer science.

She received a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

The complete list of 2013-14 University Faculty Scholars can be found here.