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SURVEYING THE COLLEGE
NOTEWORTHY NEWS AND RESEARCH FROM UA ENGINEERING
McKenna Marino, a sophomore studying biology in the STEM Path to MBA Program, assembles face shields for health care workers at The Cube.
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UA Helping Fabricate Protection for Health Care Workers
The University of Alabama community came together to help provide 3D-printed personal protective equipment, or PPE, for regional health care workers.
Two groups across three colleges on campus produced face shields for health care professionals at University Medical Center, DCH Health System in Tuscaloosa and UAB Hospital. PPE such as masks, gloves and gowns are in short supply across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Realizing the need for PPE locally at UMC and DCH, Dr. Richard Friend, dean of the UA College of Community Health Sciences that operates UMC, formed a partnership with the UA College of Engineering and the STEM Path to the MBA Program based out of the Culverhouse College of Business to print flexible headbands to attach to plastic face shields fabricated using UA equipment.
The College of Engineering’s makerspace, The Cube, which houses 3D printers and other manufacturing equipment, was used to make the PPE. Large sheets of plastic were cut using a waterjet to form the face shield and printers were used to make the headbands.
The Cube, along with individual partnerships, produced more than 1,000 face shields with headbands for UMC and DCH and delivered more than 100 in early April, said Dr. Ken Fridley, Engineering’s senior associate dean for administration.
Dr. Robert Morgan, professor of marketing and also director of the STEM Path to the MBA and CREATE Path to the MBA programs, reached out to an alumnus of the Culverhouse Executive MBA Program who works for PPG Industries in Huntsville, Alabama, that provided the plastic needed for the face shields.
McKenna Marino, a STEM Path to the MBA student, went to get the plastic and helped recruit other local students in the program to assemble the PPE on campus.
Along with this project, the Alabama Productivity Center, an outreach center part of UA’s Culverhouse College of Business, also began working to provide headbands for face shields used at UAB Hospital. The APC’s two 3D printers were enlisted by the Alabama Power Company’s Technology Applications Center.
Jody Beck with APC and his wife Sadie Beck, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, printed the headbands at home and delivered them to Birmingham.
Headbands for face shields are created through 3D printers at The Cube, part of the UA College of Engineering.
John Glidden III volunteered as an EMT during the spring in his hometown of Closter, New Jersey. Photo courtesy of John Glidden III.
UA Senior Working Pandemic Front Lines in NYC Area
Although this is not what John Glidden III envisioned for the home stretch of his senior year, he used the change in circumstances to help his hometown get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead of being in Tuscaloosa wrapping up his final classes as a student in aerospace engineering and prepping to start a job with Lockheed Martin, Glidden was in Closter, New Jersey, volunteering as both an EMT for Closter Volunteer Ambulance and Rescue Corps, a non-profit ambulance service, and at a drive-thru virus testing site.
Located about 15 minutes away from New York City, an early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., Closter is dealing with cases from the novel coronavirus as well. Glidden worked for the only 911 ambulance service in town, and the majority of calls were related to COVID-19, he said.
Glidden started volunteering with the ambulance service in high school, earning his EMT certification just after graduating. He worked with them when he was home from college. When he found himself unexpectedly home for nearly two months before his move to Orlando, Florida, to start work with Lockheed Martin, he returned to the ambulance service.
Some of the other EMTs and other personnel with the service are in groups vulnerable to COVID-19 and some got sick, he said. He also volunteered at a drive-thru testing site, preparing people to be swabbed. The majority of people at this site tested positive, he said.
In both roles, Glidden said extra safety precautions were taken; he felt safe. He urged others to take the quarantine and social distancing seriously.
He was supposed to be in Colorado for part of April working with the UA Remote Sensing Center in a research project, but said he was glad to be in this role.
UA Kick-Starts Six Projects Related to COVID-19 and Future Pandemics
Six projects designed to deepen understanding of the coronavirus pandemic and future pandemics and positively influence society will receive seed funding from The University of Alabama.
The projects come from across disciplines on campus, and were selected through the University’s Joint Institute Pandemic Pilot Project, sponsored by the UA Office for Research and Economic Development and UA’s research institutes.
Support for the projects comes from the Alabama Transportation Institute, Alabama Water Institute, Alabama Life Research Institute and the UA Cyber Initiative. The effort was guided by the strategic plan for the Office for Research and Economic Development that encourages interdisciplinary and transformative research.
Along with the viability of projects to garner external funding after being established, the review process of proposals emphasized a project’s potential to sustain beyond the current global pandemic stemming from COVID-19 and scale to other large challenges.
Two of the projects have ties to the UA College of Engineering:
• Development of a model to track
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transmission of infectious diseases that can help develop testing and quarantine strategies that contain infections without locking down a region. It could also evaluate the effectiveness of stay-at-home orders. The project is led by Dr. Jun Liu, assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering.
• Assessing emergency messaging used during the pandemic in Alabama and the perceptions of the public and decisionmakers of the response to messaging. Interviews, surveys and workshops with emergency managers around the state will help develop a pandemic and catastrophic event planning guide for dissemination to government officials. The project will be led by Dr. Laura Myers, director and senior research scientist at the Center for Advanced Public Safety.
Responders to traffic incidents or crashes can be injured – or worse – while resolving the incident. Often personnel are not able to comply with safety guidelines.
Transportation researchers at The University of Alabama are leading an effort to understand safety for those who respond to traffic incidents. The hope is to prevent injuries or death.
The work is funded by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, and it will be used by the organization to improve safety and provide information and best practices to first responders.
UA researchers will also work with the Alabama Department of Transportation and national stakeholders in the area of traffic incident management to disseminate the results.
Responders can include highway assistance patrol, police, fire, emergency medical service and towing, among others. Traffic incidents can include motor vehicle crashes, fires, medical emergencies, disabled vehicles, law enforcement activities and other unplanned events that cause injuries, property damage or traffic delays.
Emergency Responder Safety Institute’s 2019 Responder Safety Report found vehicles struck and killed 44 emergency responders.
UA researchers seek to identify and evaluate compliance with safety protocols and use of safety equipment while understanding the reasons for situations of non-compliance. They will first work with ALDOT Regional Traffic Management Centers and the Alabama Traffic Incident Management program to gather data through focus groups on existing practices and their effectiveness. This information will be used to devise a survey to be distributed to around 1,000 traffic incident responders nationwide.
With data on effective safety measures and why responders might not use them in certain situations, UA researchers will work with the Alabama Service Assistance Patrol to implement some of the measures and possibly study their use through dash cams.
Dr. Jun Liu and Dr. Alexander Hainen, both assistant professors of civil, construction and environmental engineering, along with staff members from the Alabama Transportation Institute are on the project.
Responders can include highway assistance patrol, police, fire, emergency medical service and towing, among others.
Southern U.S. Hotspots for Severe Consequences of Flash Floods
The worst region for flash floods in the continental United States is likely the Southwest, according to a recent analysis of flash floods by The University of Alabama.
Using hydrologic data, along with socioeconomic information, researchers at the UA Center for Complex Hydrosystems, led by center director Dr. Hamid Moradkhani, mapped the hotspots for flash floods.
They found the most severe effects from flash floods occur in a string of counties along the U.S.Mexico border from Texas to California, including areas much further north in New Mexico, Arizona and even Nevada, according to the study published in Scientific Reports.
Many counties in Southwest states are not well equipped to prevent or recover from damages caused by flash floods even though the region has less frequent flash floods than other areas of the country, particularly the Southeast.
Overall, the poor socio-economic indicators in the Southern half of the U.S. affects the region’s response to flash floods events, the study found.
The Southeast states, particularly the Deep South, are hotspots for frequent and longer duration flash floods alongside poor socioeconomic status, which reveals the region suffers from lack of infrastructure and sufficient resources to respond to more frequent flash flood events.
Flash floods come from intense rainfall accumulating rapidly, and they are among the deadliest natural disasters in the world.
A community’s flood risk stems from not only the intensity of rainfall and streamflow but also the people and assets exposed to potential flash floods and their lingering effects. UA researchers used a wide-range of information
Flash flood hazard characteristics converted from gauge station to the county-scale show the Southwest U.S. is a hotspot for severe risks from flash floods.
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sources at the county level across the country.
The study identified the critical and noncritical regions of the country, finding the Southwest experiences severe flash flooding with a high magnitude of damage. More counties in the Southern portions of the nation are highly vulnerable to flash flood damage, while the Northern Great Plains region of the country is not a critical area.
Emergency managers and flood insurance agencies can use the data to draw resources and attention to high-risk areas ahead of expected intense rainfall, said Moradkhani, the Alton N. Scott Chair Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
In response to the growing need for professionals skilled in the protection of digital information, The University of Alabama will offer a degree in cyber security.
Earlier this year, the University’s board of trustees approved the Bachelor of Science degree, which is being offered this fall. The degree will be housed in the UA department of computer science within the College of Engineering.
UA will be the first institution in the state to offer an undergraduate cyber security degree within a computer science department, making UA’s track unique in its focus on the technical aspects of protecting digital information from cyber attacks. In addition, students in the degree will be exposed to the hardware side of the field through required computer engineering courses.
This program is designed to provide a rigorous, technical degree that imparts the necessary knowledge, skills and motivations to protect and defend digital information from attacks. It will share many courses with the computer science degree and include
UA to Offer Degree in Cyber Security
new cyber security courses developed for the program.
Cyber security is one of the fastest growing fields in the country. In Alabama, demand for these jobs is also on the rise, particularly in industry sectors critical to the state’s economy, including military and defense contractors.
UA cyber security students will gain the specific knowledge needed to be on the forefront of designing, identifying and proposing new security strategies. The new degree program will boost students’ abilities to land jobs, such as chief information security officers, security architects, security engineers, vulnerability assessors, information security analysts and security consultants.
The University of Alabama will provide scholarships through a national program aimed at recruiting the next generation of cyber security professionals interested in government service.
UA received a five-year $3.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to provide scholarships to UA students interested in pursuing government careers in cyber security. The scholarships are offered through the CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service, SFS, which is supported by the NSF
and the Department of Homeland Security. UA’s program is called SFS@BAMA.
The program provides a full-tuition scholarship along with a stipend – $25,000 annually for undergraduate students and $34,000 annually for graduate students – along with an allowance for books, certifications and professional travel.
UA students chosen for the scholarship program must complete a summer internship and obtain employment in a governmental cyber security job after graduation for at least as many years as they receive the scholarship. Students will attend an annual job fair in Washington, D.C. and receive additional support for identifying summer internships and post-graduation employment.
ALRI Awards Funds to Faculty to Address Neurodegenerative Diseases
There are no cures for many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Research designed to elucidate target mechanisms as well as drug discovery research are important and are areas The University of Alabama is seeing grow.
The President’s Support Fund for Faculty Development, Innovation and Research, supported by the Merrymac-McKinley Foundation, is managed by the Alabama Life Research Institute. ALRI’s mission is to lead interdisciplinary bio-psychosocial research that seeks to investigate the human condition at all levels, from the molecular to the environmental.
All ALRI research efforts – from the study of genetic anomalies to governmental policy, from drug discovery to prosthetic design, from education to behavior change – seek to improve life, through the reduction of morbidity and mortality. ALRI has already identified research efforts aiming to address specific unmet needs, namely, rural health and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. In support of the goals of the President’s Support Fund, ALRI directed awards to promising junior faculty doing research in the area of neurodegenerative diseases, with the objective to both accelerate possible discoveries and to position the faculty to be highly competitive for future grant support from the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Lukasz Cielsa, assistant professor of biological sciences, along with his collaborator Dr. Yuping Bao, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, are two of the three UA faculty who will use funds awarded to support basic science research in the area of neurodegeneration.
Ciesla and Bao received $25,000 from the Merrymac-McKinley Foundation to support their research exploring neuroprotective therapy to activate and restore neural function for Alzheimer’s disease by using plant extracts and synthetic nanoparticles. Ciesla searches
Dr. Jeffrey Carver and Dr. Travis Atkison from UA, center, are recognized by Karen A. Marrongelle and Dr. F. Fleming Crim with the National Science Foundation on the left and, on the right, Bradford J. Willke from the Department of Homeland Security and Veronica Villalobos from the Office of Personnel Management.
Dr. Yuping Bao
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for compounds found in plants likely to have neuroprotective qualities while Bao tests the efficacy of these drugs using nanotechnology screening.
ALRI Names First Fellows to Address Rural, Underserved Communities
Eight faculty members have been selected as Alabama Life Research Institute Fellows at The University of Alabama as part of ALRI’s commitment to establishing a foundation of collaboration within the University. Two of the fellows are engineering faculty members.
The inaugural fellows, selected from a large number of candidates, come from across the UA campus. Fellows were chosen as representatives of diverse fields of study to create an interdisciplinary research environment that offers multiple perspectives on the ALRI mission.
The ALRI serves as a focal point for interdisciplinary bio-psychosocial research that seeks to investigate the human condition at all levels, from the molecular to the environmental, collaborating across the University, as well as with peer institutions, health care corporations, governmental agencies, community-based organizations and other concerned individuals.
The ALRI Fellows are from five different colleges, including two from the College of Engineering.
• Dr. Edward Sazonov, professor of electrical & computer engineering
• Dr. Xiangrong Shen, professor of mechanical engineering
Dr. Edward Sazonov
Dr. Xiangrong Shen Drs. John Higginbotham and John Lochman will serve as senior fellows and act as mentors to the eight faculty fellows and as advisers to Dr. Sharlene Newman, ALRI executive director, as the program expands.
NASA Selects UA Engineering Research Team for New Space Travel Program
NASA has chosen The University of Alabama as one of 14 universities in its new program to innovate space travel.
UA’s research team will create a hybrid rotating detonation engine to optimize rocket capability. Dr. Ajay Agrawal, a professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Alabama, will be the principal investigator.
Over a three-year period, the team will work on research to develop new propulsion concepts with $550,000 in grants.
The NASA program features six different topics of space research, UA’s topic being concept development for rotating detonation rocket engines. Agrawal said his team is working to enhance the performance of rocket engines by transforming the chemical energy in fuel into momentum.
Agrawal began his academic career working with NASA in the microgravity program. He has been funded by NASA for nearly 25 years and looks forward to continuing to work on this exciting new project.
Dr. Richard Branam, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics at UA, is the co-investigator on the project. Both professors will engage and oversee undergraduate and graduate engineering students in this research.
Dr. Ajay Agrawal
Dr. Richard Branam
Four UA Professors Selected for Early Career Awards
Four professors at The University of Alabama received national recognition early in their careers for leading-edge research that will advance knowledge and enhance the educational experience. Two of those faculty members are in the UA College of Engineering.
Both professors were selected by the National Science Foundation for a CAREER Award, one of the nation’s most prestigious recognition of top-performing young scientists.
The grants allow each researcher to train and motivate a new generation of scientists and engineers not only at UA through instruction and hands-on lab work, but also though outreach efforts to schools and community.
An NSF CAREER Award will fund projects by Dr. Qiang Huang and Dr. Evan Wujcik, both assistant professors of chemical and biological engineering.
The NSF Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Program is a Foundationwide activity offering the most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty with the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
Currently, 29 UA faculty from disciplines across campus have received NSF CAREER Awards during their tenure.
Huang’s CAREER Award will explore using new electrochemical methods to fabricate superconducting materials for advanced applications such as quantum computers, medical imaging and Dr. Qiang Huang other superconducting magnetic technology. His lab is developing new chemistry and methods to enable the manufacturing of superconducting materials, and the project should provide a fuller understanding of these methods' impact on superconductivity. For Wujcik, the NSF award funds continued experiments with an elastic material developed in his lab that conducts electricity and, more importantly, can heal itself, even if torn apart. The material is a Dr. Evan Wujcik promising advancement in the field of electronic skins, or e-skins, and wearable sensors, where scientists are working to make sensors lighter, smaller and less intrusive than currently used electronics. A provisional patent is filed to cover the chemical composition of the material.
Two UA Faculty Members Named Fulbright Scholars
Two University of Alabama faculty members received Fulbright Scholar Grants for the current academic year. One of those faculty members is in the UA College of Engineering.
The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers approximately 470 teaching, research or combination teaching and research awards in more than 125 countries.
Dr. Glenn Tootle, associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, was awarded a Fulbright Teaching and Research Scholar Award to the University of Dr. Glenn Tootle Trento in Italy. He will teach courses in paleohydrology and hydroclimatology, focusing on Alpine watersheds in the region.
Tootle will collaborate with UniTrento faculty and students to evaluate critical water resources challenges including the development of tree-ring based reconstructions of streamflow and snowpack; identification of climatic drivers of streamflow and snowpack; and long leadtime forecasting of streamflow for water supply. He will concurrently conduct research in these areas and work on developing an exchange program with students from
UniTrento, UA and the nearby University of Innsbruck where he has led a study abroad program since 2012.
Three civil, construction and environmental engineering faculty have been recognized for UA Faculty Research Awards.
The 2020 Faculty Research Day Awards Ceremony was canceled after the University transitioned to limited business operations. Virtual poster presentations and scholarly information for the nine faculty members receiving this year’s President’s Faculty Research Award are available at ovpred.ua.edu/faculty-research-day, and each will be recognized at the 2021 Faculty Research Day event.
Faculty Research Day highlights and celebrates excellence in research, creativity and scholarship by honoring faculty from across campus. It is also intended to increase awareness and generate enthusiasm for scholarship among faculty as the University advances its research enterprise and its impact.
Sponsored by the offices of the President and Vice President for Research and Economic Development, the awards go to outstanding faculty researchers from across UA’s colleges and schools.
Dr. Jialai Wang Faculty Research Day also recognizes recent inductees into the National Academy of Inventors. This year’s inductee is Dr. Jialai Wang, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering.
The 2020 President’s Faculty Research Award recipients in engineering were:
EMERGING SCHOLAR
Alexander Hainen civil, construction & environmental engineering
SENIOR SCHOLAR
Steven Jones civil, construction & environmental engineering
UA Names New Director of Center for Sustainable Infrastructure
The University of Alabama’s Center for Sustainable Infrastructure has named a new director.
Dr. Daan Liang, a professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, has taken the role as director of the CSI.
The CSI is a research center on campus working to make infrastructures more sustainable, resilient and energy efficient to fight against natural hazards. Dr. Daan Liang A collection of engineering faculty work with the center along with graduate students working as research assistants.
Computer Science Professor Named IEEE Fellow
A professor in the College of Engineering has been recognized by an international organization for his extensive research on WiFi standardization.
Dr. Yang Xiao, a computer science professor, has been named an IEEE Fellow for the class of 2020.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers is one of the world’s leading professional associations for advancing technology with more than 400,000 members in 160 countries. Becoming an IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership. Xiao is being recognized for his work with wireless medium access control as well as his various research topics.
Xiao has been a member of IEEE for 20 years and is appreciative of this distinguished international honor.
Becoming an IEEE Fellow is highly recognized and serves as an outstanding professional accomplishment. Members can be considered for the award if they have made significant contributions as a research engineer/scientist, application engineer/practitioner, technical leader or educator.
The International Society for Optics and Photonics, or SPIE, has recognized a member of The University of Alabama’s engineering faculty as one of the 13 Rising Researchers in the 2020 class.
Dr. Sevgi Gurbuz, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, was recognized for her research in radar microDoppler signature classification. Gurbuz has worked with radar research for many years and directs the Laboratory of Computational Intelligence for Radar at UA.
Recipients were selected based on their track record for leadership, technical contributions and communication abilities.
The award was presented during the virtual SPIE DCS Digital Forum instead of the previous planned conference in Anaheim, which was canceled due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Gurbuz was set to present two of three accepted papers at the DCS conference, including the paper affiliated with her Rising Research application, entitled “Crossfrequency training with adversarial learning for radar micro-Doppler signature classification.”
Dr. Yang Xiao
ECE Assistant Professor Named a SPIE DCS Rising Researcher
Dr. Sevgi Gurbuz
ChBE Professor Wins International Membranes Research Award
An engineering faculty member at The University of Alabama was recognized for his achievements as a young researcher.
Dr. Jason Bara, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, was given the 2019 Young Investigator Award by the journal Membranes published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. The Young Investigator Award is a highly competitive international award that is only given to one applicant.
Bara received the award because of his research on the design of polymer materials for gas separation membranes. He has done membrane research for 15 years.
MDPI is a publisher that has over 200 journals in varying fields. The Membranes edition is a science and technology journal published monthly.
Other MDPI publications give out the Young Investigator Award each year, but 2019 was the first year the Membranes journal participated. Recipients had to be under 40 years old.
Dr. Jason Bara
AEM Assistant Professor Receives ION’s Samuel Burka Award
Dr. Jordan Larson, assistant professor in The University of Alabama’s aerospace engineering and mechanics department, was recently recognized by the Institute of Navigation, or ION, for his research efforts.
The Dr. Samuel M. Burka Award was presented to Larson and his co-authors, Dr. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities,
Dr. Jordan Larson
and Dr. Jason Rife of Tufts University, for their paper Gaussian-Pareto Overbounding of DGNSS Pseudoranges from CORS. The paper was published in the Spring 2019 Issue of NAVIGATION and was the foundational research for Larson’s doctoral dissertation thesis, which focuses on safety-critical navigation systems.
The publication’s editorial board evaluated all papers in NAVIGATION’s four seasonal editions throughout the year before choosing Larson’s work as the best technical paper of 2019 at the ION International Technical Meeting on Jan. 2124 in San Diego.
UA’s Council on Community-Based Partnerships recently recognized the outstanding achievements in communityengaged scholarship through its annual Excellence in Community Engagement Awards, announced virtually.
The awards are a culmination of the efforts of faculty and students working to fulfill the University’s teaching, research and service mission through partnerships with community groups.
Through granting seed funds, graduate fellowships, undergraduate scholarships, travel grants and a variety of other acknowledgements, the program annually recognizes faculty, staff, community partners and students who work to change the lives of others through their engagement research efforts.
Top award recipients in engineering were:
OUTSTANDING SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AWARD
Dr. Kevin W. Whitaker, executive vice president and provost, was recognized for his superior leadership, exemplary efforts and outstanding vision.
DISTINGUISHED COMMUNITY ENGAGED SCHOLAR, FACULTY/STAFF
Dr. Jeff Gray, a professor of computer science, is a national leader in computer science education and has worked tirelessly to bring computer science education to public schools over the past 20 years, with special attention to bringing these skills to underserved populations.
Twenty-five additional students, faculty, staff and community partners received awards, including engineering students and faculty:
OUTSTANDING STUDENT-INITIATED ENGAGEMENT EFFORT
Dr. John Baker, Piper Daniels, Ian Noonan for UASpace, aerospace engineering and mechanics.
GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWSHIP
Jillian Maxcy-Brown, civil, construction and environmental engineering.
Although the 14th annual awards ceremony was postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Council plans to honor recipients in person at a later date. More details about the award winners can be found on the Council Awards website.
NEW UA COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FACULTY
Dr. Shahriar (Sean) Amini, associate professor, ME
Dr. Jiaqi (Jackey) Gong, associate professor, CS
Dr. Hyun (Jin) Kim, assistant professor, ME
Dr. Mesfin Mekonnen, assistant professor, CCEE Dr. Kasra Momeni, associate professor, ME
Dr. Charles (Charlie) Monroe, associate professor, MTE
Dr. Lina Pu, assistant professor, CS
Dr. Xinwu Qian, assistant professor, CCEE Dr. Mizanur Rahman, assistant professor, CCEE
Dr. Tibor Szilvasi, assistant professor, ChBE
Dr. Allen Parrish (Mississippi State University)
Dr. Allen Parrish is returning to The University of Alabama as executive director of the Alabama Transportation Institute.
Parrish worked at UA for 26 years, including as the founding director of the UA Center for Advanced Public Safety. He left in 2016 to help start the cyber operations program at the U.S. Naval Academy.
He began working at UA’s ATI Feb. 17.
ATI serves as a planning, research and policy resource to advance a modern transportation system. This interdisciplinary institute enables UA to lead the way on emerging issues and serves as an independent resource that develops unbiased information for use by local, state and national leaders in developing transportation policy.
UA’s ATI has taken the lead role in researching and analyzing transportation challenges, issuing numerous publicly-available reports to external stakeholders in the state and at the national level to inform organizations, policy makers and elected officials. Parrish comes to UA from Mississippi State University where he served as the associate vice president for research and held a tenured appointment as professor of computer science and engineering. He was also the interim director for the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center, one of MSU’s largest and most productive centers. He was responsible for facilitation of research among MSU’s academic and research stakeholders, with emphasis on transportation, data science and cybersecurity.
He initially left UA to become founding chair of the department of cyber science at the Naval Academy. During his tenure there, the program became one of the first four ABET accredited cybersecurity programs in the country and grew to be one of the largest programs at the academy.
Parrish originally joined UA in 1990 in the UA department of computer science, earning tenure as a full professor in 2005.
In 2000, Parrish became the founding director of the CARE Research and Development Laboratory, which became CAPS in 2009. Under his direction, CAPS grew to an organization with over 100 employees, students and faculty. During those years, Parrish successfully obtained over $100 million in more than 200 funded projects related to transportation and traffic safety.
Other roles at UA included becoming an associate vice president for research in 2015 prior to his departure for the Naval Academy.
He has been published in refereed journals and conferences in areas as diverse as data science, software engineering, transportation safety and technology education.
Parrish is active in computing education and workforce development. In 2016, he was recognized as a Fellow of ABET, which is the worldwide leading accrediting body for engineering, computing, technology and applied science in higher education.
Parrish received a doctorate in computer and information science from the Ohio State University in 1990.
DR. DAVID W. ARNOLD
professor of chemical and biological engineering, retired May 31, 2020. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-serving faculty member in the UA College of Engineering with 40 years of service. Arnold studied chemical engineering and earned his bachelor’s degree in 1971 from UA, master’s degree in 1976 from Georgia Institute of Technology and his doctorate in 1980 from Purdue University. His research primarily covered formulation, cleaning, rheology, atomization, combustion and commercial use of coal-water fuels; remediation of soil contaminated with oil; and formulation, rheology and process technology of the paints made from magnetic pigments that are used in the manufacture of magnetic recording media, such as audio and video tapes.
DR. PAULINE D. JOHNSON
professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, retired June 1, 2020, after more than 25 years of service to The University of Alabama. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Salford, Manchester in 1983 and a doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast in 1992, both in chemical engineering. In 1986, she received a graduate education degree from St. Andrews College, Glasgow. Johnson’s research interests were in the areas of water and wastewater treatment, sustainability, and student engagement in community service learning. She incorporated these diverse interests into innovative local and international engaged scholarship research projects involving infrastructure development, solar energy and the testing and treatment of water and wastewater for underserved communities in Peru and rural Alabama. Johnson received multiple awards including the Donald McLean Outstanding Civil Engineering Professor Award from UA’s CCE department in 2007 and 2009. She was given UA’s John L. Blackburn Award for Distinguished Contributions to Students in 2008 and the UA Distinguished Faculty Career Community Engagement Award by the UA Center for Community-Based Partnerships in 2015.
Peyton Strickland, who studied aerospace engineering and mechanics at The University of Alabama, received the 2020 Capstone Engineering Society Outstanding Senior Award.
Part of the University Honors Program and the Accelerated Master’s Program, Strickland is on track to graduate with a 4.0 grade point average in both his bachelor’s and master’s programs this year.
A native of Pelham, Alabama, he earned seven different scholarship awards during his time at UA, including a 2019 Barry Goldwater Scholarship and a 2018 and 2019 NASA/Alabama Space Grant Consortium Scholarship. A fixture on the UA President’s List since his first semester at the Capstone, Strickland was named a 2016 United States Presidential Scholar and 2016 Reach UA Foster and Homeless Youth Scholar Student.
In 2020, he was named UA National Alumni Association Outstanding Senior. The year prior, Strickland was named UA’s Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Outstanding Junior and was listed on Aviation Week and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ list of 20 Twenties. He was inducted into the aerospace engineering honor society Sigma Gamma Tau in 2018, and he was named the organization’s 2019 South Central Regional Student of the Year. Strickland has done his undergraduate research with Dr. Semih Olcmen, UA aerospace engineering and mechanics professor.
During summer 2018, he took an internship at MITRE. The company was impressed with his design work and offered him Department of Defense security clearance and a part-time position. From 2016-2018, Strickland was a mechanical engineering intern for MacLean Power Systems.
He has written two technical reports for the Missile Defense Agency, and he presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ 2018 Space Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.
While at UA, Strickland led as an aerospace engineering and mechanics department ambassador, Sigma Gamma Tau vice president, AIAA student branch president and AIAA Region II student conference chairman. A member of the Alabama Rocketry Association, he was involved with the Alabama Rocket Engineering Systems IV Junior Team and the ARES V Senior Design Team.
Every other week, Strickland visited Central High School to teach students C ++ coding and worked to connect the students to NASA through video conferences and field trips. At the same time, he mentored seventh grade students at Echols Middle School and volunteered with the 2019 Tuscaloosa Rocketry Challenge.
Strickland worked with United Launch Alliance on rocket propulsion for all of this summer’s
launches at Cape Canaveral, Florida, including the Atlas V rocket and the Mars 2020 rover, before returning to UA in the fall to finish his master’s degree.
The CES began the Outstanding Senior Award in 1986 to honor an exceptional student who deserves distinction among his or her peers. An outstanding student is selected from the 11 academic programs in the College, and the overall winner is determined by a selection committee after assessing each student’s academic performance, professional and technical activities, College leadership, external leadership and other activities. Slater plans on pursuing a medical degree as well as a doctorate in biomedical informatics with the goal of conducting clinical computational oncology research while directing a lab at the university level.
UA Student Receives Goldwater Scholarship
The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program has selected a student from The University of Alabama as a Goldwater Scholar for 2020-2021.
Hannah Slater, a Randall Research Scholar studying chemical engineering and chemistry from New Lenox, Illinois, is the 57th UA student to receive the prestigious Goldwater scholarship. Her parents are Ronald and Tina Slater.
Slater has worked under Dr. David A. Dixon, professor and Robert Ramsay Chair of Chemistry, researching the hydrogen bonding interaction between bioisosteres and amino acids using computational chemistry approaches. According to Slater, there is significant interest in designing drugs with novel binding sites for interactions with specific peptides in proteins to improve pharmaceutical outcomes.
Outside of research, Slater is president of UA’s student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, vice president of UA’s student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society and volunteers at DCH Regional Medical Center. She also works as a residential adviser on campus.
Hannah Slater From left, Max Hawkins and Nicholas Hayes.
Three UA Students Earn Hollings Scholarships
Three University of Alabama students will receive the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship for 2020-2022. Two of those students have ties to the College of Engineering.
The scholarship provides a two-year academic award of $9,500 per year, and a 10-week, fulltime, paid summer internship opportunity at any NOAA facility nationwide. Scholars also receive funding to present their NOAA research projects at two national scientific conferences.
Since the program’s inception in 2005, 36 UA students have been named Hollings Scholars.
Max Hawkins, of Renner, South Dakota, is a computer engineering major and Randall Research Scholar. He has worked under Dr. Jeremy Bailin, associate professor of physics and astronomy, to improve radio astronomy data using machine learning techniques.
His research continues work Hawkins did in summer 2019 at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. During summer 2020, he
interned remotely at Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million initiative to search for civilizations beyond Earth. Hawkins is also a member of UA’s EcoCar team.
Nicholas Hayes, of Memphis, Tennessee, is a Randall Research Scholar pursuing a diverse combination of majors and minors in mathematics, physics, interdisciplinary linguistics, German and computer science. Hayes serves as an undergraduate research assistant for Dr. Firat Soylu, assistant professor of educational psychology and neuroscience, and Dr. Zhe Jiang, assistant professor of computer science.
He contributes to projects focusing on bilingual math cognition, machine learning and spatiotemporal data mining with applications in earth science. Outside of research, Hayes is an Honors College Ambassador, Tide Talks executive team member and co-founder of Tuscaloosa’s chapter of the United Nations Association of the United States of America.
Thirteen UA Students Win Fulbright Awards
Three University of Alabama students received Fulbright Student Research Awards and 10 have won Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Awards for the 2020–2021 academic year. Two of these students major in engineering.
The Fulbright Program is the most prestigious U.S. international exchange program, offering opportunities for students, scholars and professionals. The Fulbright Award of the U.S. Department of State offers one-year grants for independent study and research, and for English teaching assistantships overseas.
The highly competitive program selects about 1,500 award recipients from over 11,000 applicants each year. UA has received national recognition as a Top Producing Institution for Fulbright U.S. Students four of the last five years.
FULBRIGHT STUDENT RESEARCH AWARD RECIPIENTS:
Joshua Kirks, of Kennesaw, Georgia, received a Fulbright Award to research, “Hollow Cathode Development and Testing,” at Dresden University of Technology in Germany. He is a UA graduate student in aerospace engineering and mechanics who holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from UA and memberships in Sigma Gamma Tau and Delta Phi Alpha honor societies.
Mason Olivia Blanke, of Tuscaloosa, a UA Presidential Scholar, Honors College member and 2020 graduate in electrical engineering and physics with a certificate in teaching English as a foreign language, was chosen to teach in Poland.
Sean Devey and Jane Gillette are studying aerospace engineering and mechanics at UA.
UA STEM Students among Nation’s Top 20 in 20s
Two University of Alabama College of Engineering students are among the nation’s top 20 science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, students in their 20s.
Jane Gillette and Sean Devey were recognized as two of Aviation Week’s 20 Twenties for 2020,
sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The award recognizes students earning STEM degrees who are nominated by their universities based upon great academic performance and research paired with civic contribution. Gillette, a May 2020 graduate from St. Louis, Missouri, studied aerospace engineering with a double minor in mechanical engineering and math. Last year, she balanced her bachelor’s degree while also working on her Master of Business Administration in the Accelerated Master’s Program, a route allowing students to take graduate classes early.
She has interned at NASA, United Launch Alliance and Boeing. Gillette was also recently named the first Brooke Owens Fellow at The University of Alabama and credits her involvement in the Alabama Rocketry Association.
Devey was a master’s student in aerospace engineering with a focus on experimental fluid mechanics. The North Salem, New York, native finished work on his master’s degree this summer with plans to graduate in December, and has begun a doctoral program at California Institute of Technology. Devey completed internships at PepsiCo, Lincoln Laboratory and Boeing during his time as a UA undergraduate. He was also a Goldwater Scholar. He values time spent his sophomore year in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates, or REU, program hosted by Dr. Amy Lang, UA associate professor of aerospace engineering.
UA Student Recognized as 2020 Better Scientific Software Fellow
Nasir Eisty, a doctoral graduate in the computer science department at The University of Alabama, has been selected as a 2020 Better Scientific Software Fellow.
Better Scientific Software, or BSSw, is a U.S. Department of Energy project focused on improving software for computational science and engineering. The fellowship program provides funding for leaders and advocates of high-quality software.
A May 2020 UA doctoral graduate, Nasir Eisty’s research interests are in the area of software engineering. He completed his master’s degree in computer science at UA in 2018.
Eisty, who worked in UA computer science professor Dr. Jeffrey Carver’s software engineering research lab, will receive $25,000 to develop a tutorial on automated testing for scientific software.
Eisty’s work will focus on the development and delivery of a hands-on tutorial entitled “Automatic Testing in Scientific Software.” In the tutorial, he will give background information on automatic testing techniques in scientific software development and demonstrate hands-on test methods before concluding with a group discussion on the approaches most suitable for individual projects.
He will have the opportunity to interact with researchers from DOE national laboratories to introduce the tutorial.
He targets to present his tutorial at the eScience International Conference and the SuperComputing Conference to help developers produce more correct and reliable software. He will conclude his fellowship time with a BSSw webinar containing the tutorial materials.
Eisty was recognized along with the other 2020 Fellows during the 2020 Exascale Computing Project Annual Meeting on Feb. 4 in Houston.
Demarcus Joiner
Meet UA’s New SGA President
Demarcus Joiner, a junior civil engineering major from Roanoke, Alabama, was elected Student Government Association president for the 202021 term.
Joiner was inaugurated on March 31. Things looked a little different this year, but the University’s online learning shift didn’t slow things down. It was, virtually, business as usual.
Joiner comes to the position with significant experience. Last year, he served as SGA’s vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion.
One of Joiner’s primary goals as president is to work with UA’s Counseling Center to develop additional resources for students. He also plans to create a campus relations committee, where students from different campus communities have the opportunity to regularly meet with SGA to share concerns.
Since arriving at UA three years ago, Joiner has taken full advantage of the student life experience, involving himself in Collegiate 100, National Society for Black Engineers, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, or LSAMP, program and the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, to name a few.
In his spare time, his favorite thing to do is sing, and he participates in the Afro American Gospel Choir as often as he can.
Joiner is hopeful that his presidency will have a meaningful impact on students and the campus community.
After graduation, Joiner plans to attend law school, in preparation for a career in public service.
UA Chemical Engineering Doctoral Candidate Earns Research Award UA Engineering Student Awarded U.S. Department of Transportation Fellowship
A University of Alabama engineering student’s research presentation was awarded a top honor at a recent international conference.
Kathryn O’Harra, a chemical engineering doctoral candidate, was awarded first place for her oral research presentation at the 5th International Conference on Ionic Liquid-Based Materials, or IL-MAT V. This conference, which was hosted in Paris, took place Nov. 4-8, 2019.
O’Harra gave an oral presentation about her doctoral research on the development, design, synthesis and application of high-performance ionic polymers and composites for gas separation membranes and 3D printing. She said the research is environmentally geared and seeks to combat industrial emissions through more energy efficient separation processes.
She conducts her research with Dr. Jason E. Bara, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering. O’Harra has been working with Bara since late in her time as an undergraduate student, while completing bachelor’s degrees in chemical and biological engineering and dance Kathryn O’Harra performance. attended the IL-MAT V conference in Paris and At the IL-MAT Conference, received an award for O’Harra was able to her presentation. present the research to and interact with international colleagues, as well as gain connections to form new collaborations. Gabi Willis is a civil engineering doctoral student working with Dr. Sriram Aaleti. A University of Alabama engineering doctoral student was awarded a national fellowship with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Gabi Willis, a civil engineering doctoral candidate, was awarded a fellowship with the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program. This program, which is sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration, includes a $5,000 grant and an invitation to the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, which was held in January 2020.
The application for the fellowship asked students to detail a research topic they would like to explore that focused on transportation. The merit-based program awards grants of different amounts to 150-200 graduate students across the country annually.
Willis’ proposed research involves investigating the interface between an original pavement surface and a new overlay that might be poured to fix problems, like potholes. The research
