New faculty bring multidisciplinary expertise to MAE

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New MAE faculty (l-r) Scott Noll, Vicky Doan-Nguyen, Richard Vasques, Bilin Aksun Guvenc, Ran Dai, Clarissa Belloni, Alok Sutradhar and Pelagia-Iren Gouma.
New MAE faculty (l-r) Scott Noll, Vicky Doan-Nguyen, Richard Vasques, Bilin Aksun Guvenc, Ran Dai, Clarissa Belloni, Alok Sutradhar and Pelagia-Iren Gouma.

This year, eight new faculty members have joined the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at The Ohio State University.



Bilin Aksun Guvenc
Research Professor

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As a mechanical engineering leader for more than two decades, Bilin Aksun Guvenc brings her expertise in both automotive control and intelligent transportation systems to MAE. Her primary focus area is vehicle dynamics controllers, such as electronic stability control, adaptive cruise control, cooperative adaptive cruise control, collision warning and avoidance systems, and autonomous vehicles. From Sept. 2014 to 2017, she served as a visiting professor in MAE and the Center for Automotive Research (CAR). Prior to that role, she worked at Istanbul Technical University and Istanbul Okan University as a professor of mechanical engineering.

Aksun Guvenc has a long history of working as a principal investigator and researcher in several automotive industry projects for major automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in Turkey. She is the co-holder of two European patents on yaw dynamics stability control and yaw rate virtual sensing for road vehicles, respectively. She is also a member of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) technical committees on automotive control, since 2005, and on mechatronics, since 2008. She is the author of two book chapters, one book and more than 90 publications in technical journals and conferences.

Aksun Guvenc earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Istanbul Technical University.


Clarissa Belloni
Assistant Professor

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Named an International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) expert on river energy resource assessment and characterization, Clarissa Belloni is developing industrial standards for hydrokinetic energy extraction. Her current research is exploring the analysis of hydrokinetic and low-head hydro power, building on her experience in wind farm aerodynamics as well as advanced thermodynamics cycles.

Belloni joins MAE from the University of Cincinnati, where she served as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Prior to that role, she was the head of research and development at Smart Hydro Power. In that position, Belloni developed hydrokinetic river turbines for rural electrification. She is an author and co-author of publications and patents in the fields of applied fluid dynamics and thermodynamic processes.

Belloni earned her Dipl.-Ing. (equivalent to a master’s degree) in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich. She received her doctorate in engineering science from the University of Oxford.


Ran Dai
Assistant Professor

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Ran Dai joins MAE as assistant professor and director of the Autonomation and Optimization Laboratory. Her research focuses on the motion planning and decision making of autonomous systems, and computational optimization. Prior to this role, she served as assistant professor of aerospace engineering and a Black & Veatch Faculty Fellow at Iowa State University. During her first year at Iowa State, Dai manufactured a prototype of a solar-powered vehicle. In 2015, the National Science Foundation (NSF) allowed her to expand on that research.

With a $500,000 NSF CAREER Award, Dai and her team of researchers designed a solar-powered unmanned vehicle that was adequately prepared to navigate long-duration, high-efficiency search and rescue missions. Her project aimed to harvest the energy that powers those missions from the environment instead of using limited, non-renewable fuel sources. Her experience as an engineer at Dynamic Research, Inc. prepared her for working with semi-autonomous vehicle guidance and control.

Dai earned her bachelor’s degree from Beihang University, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering from Auburn University. Her post-doctoral research took place at the University of Washington, where she assisted on an energy management project for the next generation of Boeing 787 aircraft power systems.


Vicky Doan-Nguyen
Assistant Professor

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With a dual appointment in MAE and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Vicky Doan-Nguyen’s research explores nanomaterials’ ability to produce global solutions for electrical energy storage and conversion challenges. Her research combines smart design, synthesis, novel local structure probes, and functional testing of nanostructured materials to understand how structural changes at the atomic scale propagate to improve functional performance. By combining advanced techniques, such as element-specific in-situ electron microscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, Doan-Nguyen and her team are able to design next-generation materials for electrochemical energy storage and heterogeneous catalysis.

Prior to her role as assistant professor, Doan-Nguyen was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and an Ellings Prize Fellow in the Ram Seshadri Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her post-doctoral work also supported UC Santa Barbara’s California NanoSystems Institute.

Doan-Nguyen earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry and women’s studies at Yale University. She received both her master’s and doctoral degrees in materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, the American Crystallographic Association, and the Electrochemical Society. 


Pelagia-Iren (Perena) Gouma
Professor and Orton Chair of Ceramics Engineering

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Professor Pelagia-Iren Gouma joins the college as the Edward Orton Jr. Chair of Ceramics Engineering, with a dual appointment in MAE and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Her research focuses on nanotechnology and nanomanufacturing. She has also established novel programs on nanomedicine, such as breath and skin-based diagnostic tools.

As an internationally recognized researcher, Professor Gouma has held guest faculty appointments at various international universities and research laboratories. She has been a Fulbright Scholar to UNICAMP, Brazil, and has received the Richard M. Fulrath Award from the American Ceramic Society. Gouma is also a member of the National Academy of Inventors. She has authored and co-authored more than 130 articles in peer-reviewed journals. She has 18 U.S. and international patents involving nanomaterials, photocatalysts, sensors and breathalyzers.

Before joining Ohio State, she was affiliated with the University of Texas at Arlington and the university’s research institute (UTARI). Prior to that, she was a professor at SUNY Stony Brook for 16 years, where she served as the director of the Center for Nanomaterials and Sensor Development. Gouma earned her bachelor’s degree in applied physics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a master’s degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Liverpool. She received her doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of Birmingham, U.K.


Scott Noll
Research Assistant Professor

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Scott Noll aims to solve virtual product development challenges through advanced modeling and experimental approaches. His research interests include nonlinear structural dynamics, vibrations, inverse identification, experimental modal analysis, experimental FRF-based substructuring methods, applied finite element modeling and design. His research has direct applications in high-fidelity automotive crash pulse simulation; structure-borne road noise; automotive tire, road surface and vehicle interactions; body structure durability; and elastomeric and hydroelastic bushings and mounts. Noll aims to develop a new subsystem design for light-weight vehicle structural assemblies.

Prior to this position, Noll served as a research scientist and project leader for Ohio State’s Smart Vehicle Concepts Center, which is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry-University Cooperative Research Center. In that role, he worked to provide industry, government and other organizations with the means to leverage research and development investments with Ohio State centers renowned for their innovative research capabilities. In addition to serving as a research assistant professor, Noll currently serves as an affiliated faculty member in the Simulation Innovation and Modeling (SIM) Center.

Noll earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Ohio Northern University. He received his master’s in engineering mechanics and doctorate in mechanical engineering from Ohio State.


Alok Sutradhar
Assistant Professor
 

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Alok Sutradhar’s research interests are in the areas of bio-inspired design, biomedical modeling, additive manufacturing, computer-aided design, and biomimetics.

His research employs computer modeling and simulation for design, analysis, and synthesis of mechanical and biological structures. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs to explore the optimized design of multi-scale and multi-material structures. In addition to publishing more than 20 journal papers, he has a patent for the additive manufacturing of implants and implant components. He has authored a graduate-level textbook titled ‘Symmetric Galerkin Boundary Element Method,’ which was published by Springer-Verlag. His innovative research focused on facial bone and flap surgery was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Using his novel topology optimization technique, Sutradhar has designed craniofacial bone replacements of intricate facial bones. His research has been featured in The Economist, De Spiegel and NSF Discoveries.

He was previously an assistant professor in the Department of Plastic Surgery at The Ohio State University. Sutradhar received his PhD in structural engineering with specializations in computational mechanics and computational science/engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 


Richard Vasques
Assistant Professor

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Richard Vasques will bring his expertise in mathematical and computational modeling of transport phenomena to the department this fall. His work focuses on advanced modeling and simulations, fission reactor physics, and non-classical transport methods. The focus of his latest research is on modeling particle transport and diffusion in stochastic mixtures by developing new homogenization techniques, such as the non-classical transport theory. Prior to this role, he served as an assistant project scientist in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Vasques’ research has applications in reactor physics, neutron imaging, atmospheric sciences, remote sensing, image rendering, and computer-generated imagery. His latest paper, which explores the non-classical transport equation, was published in the Nuclear Science and Engineering journal. He is a member of the American Nuclear Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in applied and computational mathematics and his master’s degree in applied mathematics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He earned his doctoral degree in applied and interdisciplinary mathematics from the University of Michigan. The partner department for his interdisciplinary doctoral research was the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.

 

Category: Faculty