Sathyanarayanan Aakur, Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Software Engineering, has achieved significant professional milestones. He was elevated to Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) senior member status and named associate editor for Pattern Recognition. Aakur co-chaired the IEEE/Computer Vision Foundation Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) and served as area chair for top-tier AI and data science conferences such as IEEE/CVF CVPR, the British Machine Vision Conference, IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on the Applications of Computer Vision, the Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems and the International Conference on Data Science and the Management of Data.
J. Brian Anderson, professor (geotechnical) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the National Civil Engineering Honor Society’s National Faculty Advisor Award at its National Virtual Convention this past April. The convention, hosted by the organization’s Auburn Chapter, allowed delegates from 50 chapters across the United States to engage with one another.
Symone Alexander, assistant professor in chemical engineering, was appointed to the Journal of the American Chemical Society Au Early Career Advisory Board. The open-access multi-disciplinary journal is devoted to publishing manuscripts reporting significant research discoveries in all fields of chemistry.
Bryan Beckingham, the Mary and John H. Sanders Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and director of the Center for Polymers and Advanced Composites, received a Le Studium visiting researcher fellowship at the University of Orleans (France) from September 2024 to July 2025. His project, “Leveraging tunability of copolymer gradients during polymer synthesis to advance understanding of polymer self-assembly in confirmed geometries,” is expected to advance the understanding of fundamental self-assembly processes and reorganization by solvent-vapor annealing enabling a priori design of future materials and leverage this control to fabricate porous polymer thin films as nanomaterial templates with controlled special morphology.
Lauren Beckingham, the W. Allen and Martha Reed Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received a Le Studium visiting researcher fellowship at the University of Orleans (France) from September 2024 to July 2025. Her project, “Multi-scale observation and simulation of mineral reactions in subsurface energy systems,” is expected to yield unprecedented understanding and simulation of mineral reaction mechanisms and rates in diverse environments pertinent for subsurface energy systems.
Ben Bowers, the McCartney-Chase Highway Engineering Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, earned a $167,631 grant from the Virginia Department of Transportation to study the resilience of full-depth reclamation pavement mixtures to flood inundation.
John Cochran, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering, was awarded membership into the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Academy of Distinguished Alumni in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas-Austin.
Selen Cremaschi, chemical engineering department chair and the B. Redd and Susan W. Redd Eminent Scholar Chair Professor, was accepted into the 2025 Leadership Institute, a leadership development program for higher education professionals1. She also co-edited a new book, “Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Design,” with collaborators from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Coupa Software and Linde.
Pengyu Chen, the Francis Family Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was awarded $1.9 million by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences for his five-year study, “Machine Learning-Assisted Integrated Optofluidic Nano-plasmonic Biosensing for Precision Immune Profiling and Monitoring Source of Support.” This renewal application aims to advance the next generation of immune biosensing by integrating machine learning to enable precision immune profiling and monitoring for better patient care.
Virginia Davis, the Daniel F. and Josephine Breeden Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, co-founded the Auburn I-STEM Connectory with Mary Lou Ewald, director of outreach at the College of Sciences and Mathematics (COSAM). This center will be a hub for sharing ideas and building capacity in informal STEM education to support Auburn’s mission and Alabama’s workforce development needs. Davis is also principal investigator on a three-year $500K USDA NIFA Professional Development for Agricultural Literacy program grant titled “Project FARM: Fostering Agricultural Research and Mentoring” with co-PIs Jessica Gilpin and Ewald from COSAM, Eve Brantley, professor and extension specialist (water resources) in the College of Agriculture, and Becky Barlow, associate dean for extension and assistant director for agriculture, forestry and natural resource extension programs in the College of Agriculture.
George Flowers, mechanical engineering professor and dean of the Auburn University Graduate School, was presented with the prestigious Holm Scientific Achievement Award at the 69th Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Holm Conference on Electrical Contacts during its Oct. 6-10 convention in Annapolis, Maryland.
Sean Gallagher, professor emeritus in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, earned the International Ergonomics & Human Factors Association Fellow Award. This award is given in recognition of outstanding and sustained performance in the field of ergonomics and human factors at an international level, as well as an extensive publication record in international journals, international consulting or service at a high level.
Ujjwal Guin, the Godbold Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will co-chair two reputed Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conferences in 2025. Guin will co-chair the 33rd IEEE Asian Test Symposium in Ahmedabad, India, Dec. 17-20. He will also co-chair the International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, the premier symposium that facilitates the rapid growth of hardware-based security research and development, May 5-8, 2025, in San Jose, California.
Robert Jackson, the Albert J. Smith Jr. Endowed Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, chaired the combined 32nd International Conference on Electrical Contacts and 69th Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Holm Conference on Electrical Contacts held Oct. 6-10 in Annapolis, Maryland
Edward Huang, associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has been invited to serve as an associate editor for Advanced Engineering Informatics (ADVEI), a highly regarded peer-reviewed journal. ADVEI features research that compares, evaluates and summarizes methodologies and representations in engineering informatics, focusing on advancing the integration of artificial intelligence and industrial applications.
Jasmeet Lamba, an associate professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering, co-authored a paper titled “Application of Sediment Fingerprinting to Apportion Sediment Sources: Using Machine Learning Models.” The paper was published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and received the 2024 ASABE Superior Paper Award. Former biosystems engineering graduate student Kritika Malhotra, who recently completed her doctorate under Lamba’s mentorship, was the paper’s lead author. The other co-authors included Jingyi Zheng, an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and Ash Abebe, a professor and chair in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
Elizabeth Lipke, the George E. and Dorothy Stafford Uthlaut Endowed Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is a co-principal investigator of a one-year, $350,000 Phase I National Institute of Health Small Business Innovation Research grant, “VivoSpheres: Tissue-Engineered Spheroidal Models for High-Throughput Screening.” The grant is a collaboration between biotech startup VivoSphere and Auburn University.
Masoud Mahjouri-Samani, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering and director of the Auburn University LASE-END lab, was elected as associate editor of the Journal of Laser Micro/Nanoengineering and earned a $270,000 National Science Foundation grant for his collaborative research, “Effect of twist angle on the interfacial thermal conductance of 2D homo- and heterojunctions.”
Joseph Majdalani, the Hugh and Loeda Francis Chair of Excellence in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Auburn University, was named an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Fellow at the AIAA Fellow Induction Ceremony and Awards Gala this past May in Washington, D.C.
Shiwen Mao, the Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar and Director of the Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center, and his doctoral student Ziqi Wang, won the Best Demo Award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Computer Communications held this past May in Vancouver, Canada. Mao was also elected as a member-at-large of the IEEE Communications Society’s Board of Governors for 2025-27 and vice president of technical activities of IEEE council on RFID for 2024-26. As an advocate for involvement in professional and educational organizations, Mao has given keynote speeches at six international conferences and workshops since April.
Mark Schall, the Daniel F. & Josephine Breeden Associate Professor in industrial and systems engineering, earned the 2024 International Ergonomics Association/Kingfar Early Career Researcher Award.
Yin Sun, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering, was appointed as an associate editor for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Information Theory journal, effective July 10.
Yazhou Tu, assistant professor in computer science and software engineering, received the Distinguished Paper Award at the 2024 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Symposium on Security and Privacy in Oakland, California, in May. He serves as the publicity chair and travel grant coordinator for SmartSP 2024/2nd European Alliance for Innovation International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles. He has also been awarded $200,000 in grant funding as a sub-award under the National Science Foundation’s Division of Computer and Network Services.
Adriana Vargas-Nordbeck, associate research professor at the National Center for Asphalt Technology, was awarded $400,000 from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program to develop a field test to determine chip seal aggregate embedment. She was also part of a $1.7 million pooled research fund led by the Minnesota Department of Transportation for the project “National Partnership to Improve the Quality of Preventive Maintenance Treatment Construction & Data Collection Practices.” She was awarded $120,000 by the National Road Research Alliance to investigate the feasibility of using recycled materials in pavement preservation.
Jin Wang, the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Peter He, the George E. and Dorothy Stafford Uthlaut Endowed Professor of Chemical Engineering, were issued a U.S. Department of Energy patent titled “Culture Systems and Methods of Using Same,” along with commercial and demonstration plant manager Matthew Hilliard, who earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from Auburn in 2019.
Matthew Yarnold, associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, was awarded $250,000 by the National Cooperative Highway Research Center for his two-year project, “Impact of Bolt Holes on the Performance of Steel Girders.”
Huaguo Zhou, the Elton Z. and Lois G. Huff Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the 2024 Auburn Author Award, a High-Value Research Award from the California Department of Transportation and a special projects award in the safety area from the Southern California District Institute of Transportation Engineers.
