Current Issue
(Fall 2005)
Speed's New Faculty Bring Diverse Expertise in Emerging Fields
Can vehicle seating be improved to protect wheelchair-using passengers?
Can data on the way customers use the Web be mined better while ensuring privacy protection?
Can more complex atomic-scale, three-dimensional structures be built to meet the needs of the telecommunications industry?
These are some of the questions being asked by a diverse new group of faculty who've come on board at the Speed School in the latter half of 2004.
"I'm excited about the diverse expertise that our new faculty bring to the Speed School," says Speed Dean Mickey Wilhelm. "They will help us strengthen our school in several emerging engineering areas."
The new faculty members include:
Gina Bertocci
Bertocci is the first holder of the biomechanics chair in bioengineering in Speed's mechanical engineering department. In addition to being an associate professor in Speed she holds a joint appointment in the School of Medicine's pediatrics department.
Bertocci previously was an associate professor in rehabilitation science and technology at the University of Pittsburgh. It is there that she received her degrees, including a Ph.D. in bioengineering in 1997, as well as bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering in 1983 and 1991, respectively.
Bertocci uses computational methods, including evaluating medical imagery, to better understand bone fracture risks in cases of child abuse, auto crashes and more. She is also studying better ways to protect patients, including wheelchair users aboard vehicles.
The biomechanics chair was created with funds from the state's "Bucks for Brains" program that were matched with a 2001 bequest from the estate of Charles and Theresa Grosscurth (both '91AD).
Olfa Nasraoui
Nasraoui is the first holder of the endowed chair in e-commerce in Speed's computer engineering and computer science department. She is an assistant professor in the department and held that title in her previous job at the University of Memphis.
Nasraoui earned her Ph.D. in computer engineering and computer science from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1999 and her bachelor's and master's degrees there in 1990 and 1992, respectively.
Nasraoui studies computer and machine-learing techniques to mine data from databases, text and the Web. The results could aid e-commerce enterprises and others in gleaning useful consumer data while protecting individual user privacy.
The e-commerce chair was created with funds from the state's "Bucks for Brains" program that were matched with a 2001 bequest from the estate of Charles and Theresa Grosscurth (both '91AD).Hichem Frigui
Frigui is an assistant professor in Speed's computer engineering and computer science department. Both he and his wife, Olfa Nasraoui, came to U of L from the University of Memphis, where he was an assistant professor.
He earned his Ph.D. in computer engineering and computer science from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1997. He also received his bachelor's and master's degrees from that institution.
Frigui's data-mining studies seek ways to find complex relationships or patterns from data sets in databases, the Web and more.
Gerold Willing
Willing is an assistant professor in the chemical engineering department. The Speed post is his first faculty appointment. He comes to U of L from Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, where he was a postdoctoral appointee from 2001 to 2004. While there he developed new techniques to build complex three-dimensional nanoscale structures.
Willing's appointment complements the growing team of researchers at Speed working in the new field of nanotechnology, or the creation of tiny, atomic-scale devices.
Willing received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Auburn University in 2001.
Tamer Inanc
Inanc is an assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department. This is his first faculty appointment. Inanc previously was a postdoctoral scholar in control and dynamical systems at the California Institute of Technology.
He received his master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Penn State University and earned his bachelor's degree from the electrical and electronics engineering department at the Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir, Turkey. His research focuses on computer vision systems.
Aoy Tomita-Mitchell
Tomita Mitchell is an assistant professor in the new bioengineering department. It is her first faculty appointment. She previously was a postdoctoral fellow in the division of cardiology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
She received her Ph.D. in bioengineering and environmental health from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tomita-Mitchell also was a visiting scientist at MIT.
Her research is on development and utilization of high-throughput methodologies for identifying genetic risk factors of congenital heart disease.
