Research & Innovation

Professor Kimberley Ogden:

Kimberley Ogden is UA's principal investigator on a $44 million DOE biofuels project and an NSF-funded STEM educator. The National Alliance for Advanced biofuels and bioproducts (NAABB), of which the UA is a member, received a grant in 2010 from the U.S. Department of Energy totaling more than $44 million for algal biofuels and bio products research and development. Read More. 

Professor Shane Snyder:

Shane Snyder joined the UA College of Engineering as a professor of chemical and environmental engineering in 2010.In 1998, Snyder discovered that estrogens and pharmaceuticals were common contaminants in North American waters. His research has been hailed as the first in NorthAmerica to link the presence of trace steroids to reproductive problems in fish. Read More.

Professor Kevin Lansey:
 

Professor Kevin Lansey, head of the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, and four UA collegaues have been awarded $2 million by the National Science Foundation to research water reuse and supply systems. Read More. 

Professor Armin Sorooshian:
 
                        
Armin Sorooshian, an assistant professor in the department of chemical and environmental engineering, and the atmospheric sciences department researches the effects of aerosol particles on climate change. public heatlh, and renewable energy applications. Read More. 

Professor Mary Poulton:

 The Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources is the largest interdisciplinary mineral resources research center in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world. It is directed by mining and geological engineering department head and University Distinguished Professor Mary Poulton, and funded by $17.2 million from Science Foundation Arizona and 21 industry partners, 1.6 million from NIOSH, and an endowment from J. David and Edith Lowell.
Read More. 

Professor Jim Field:


Professor Jim A. Field is chair of the chemical and environmental engineering department, where his research programs focuses on bioremediation, which is the application of bacteria and fungi to catalyze the transformation of toxic pollutants into environmentally safe end products. Field’s current research portfolio focuses on issues relevant to the Southwest, such as acid mine drainage, and uranium and arsenic pollution. He is developing passive (low management, lowcost) treatment systems for treating acid mine drainage using sulfate-reducing bacteria that generate sulfides to precipitate heavy metals with the potential for reuse. His team is researching the treatment of uranium in groundwater based on the biological reduction of soluble hexavalent uranium to insoluble materials. Read More.

Professor Jennifer Barton:


Jennifer Barton, head of the biomedical engineering department, is working on advanced optical imaging tools that can peer inside the body and detect abnormal cells. She uses optical coherence tomography (OCT), which is analogous to ultrasound. "The first stages of cancer are microscopic changes in cells," Barton said. "If cancer is caught at this early stage, the chance of recovry is excellent." Read More.

Professor Jerzy Rozenblit:


University Distinguished Professor Jerzy Rozenblit, director of the Model Based System Design Laboratory, recently stepped down as electrical and computer engineering department head to focus on research. He is also co-director of the Arizona Simulation Technology and Education Center at the UA College of Medicine, where his research includes custom building a surgical instrument manipulator for computer-assisted surgical training and performance measurement of laparoscopies. Read More.

Professor Pak Wong:


Pak Kin Wong, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering and BIO5 member, is the recipient of a $1.5 million NIH Director's New Innovator Award. Wong's research aims to discover the rules that govern how biological tissues are formed from individual cells. In particular, Wong is investigating how to grow new tissue to replace that destroyed by disease. Read More.

Professor Marek Romanowski:


Marek Romanowski, associate professor in the biomedical engineering department, heads a UA research team that recently won an NSF award to help fund a broadly tunable femtosecond laser facility. When used in medical imaging, femtosecond laser pulses can produce clearer images and more accurate diagnoses of disease with no tissue damage and no background interference. Read More.

Professor Pierre Deymier:


Pierre Deymier, professor of materails science and engineering and director of the UA's School of Sustainable Engineered Systems, and his team have patented a bioengineering process that could completely transform microchip manufacture. Read More.

Professor Eniko Enikov:


Eniko Enikov, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, is studying tactile microsensors for digital tonometry of the eye, with a view to uunderstanding the mechanical response of the human eye during digital palpatation. A recent result of this NSF-funded research is a self-administered glaucoma test that can be conducted at home. Read More.

Professor Erica Corral:


Erica L. Corral, assistant professor in the department of materials science and engineering, is being funded by NSF and AFOSR to research new materials for spacecraft coatings that can withstand the harsh environments encountered in space missions. Read More.

Professor Roberto Furfaro:


The University of Arizona is the highest ranked research university for planetary exploration in terms of literature citations. Professor Roberto Furfaro, of the departments of systems and industrial design directs the Space Systems Engineering Laboratory. Read More.

Professor Ricardo Sanfelice:


Ricardo Sanfelice, assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering and director of the Hybrid Dynamics and Control Laboratory, is developing mathematical analysis and design methods that could radically advance the capabilities of unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles, as well as many other systems that rely on autonomous decision making. Read More.

Professor Segey Shkarayev:


Sergey Shkarayev, professor in the department of aerospace and mechanical engineering, is director of the Micro Air Vehicles Laboratory, where he researches unsteady aerodynamics and the design of small, unmanned aircraft. Read More.

Professor Hermann Fasel:


Hermann Fasel, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, directs the Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and the Hydrodynamics Laboratory. Since 2002 he has secured nearly 30 research grants and currently has active funding of more than $5 million. Read More.

Professor Wolfgang Fink:


Wolfgang Fink, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, directs the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory. Read More.

Professor Bane Vasic:


The work of Bane Vasic, a professor in the electrical and computer engineering department, in the area of coding for data storage is widely known. He co-invented the soft error-event decoding algorithm, and is the key architect of a detector-decoder chip developed at Bell Labs, which was the first to use the principle of soft decoding in magnetic-recording read channels. Read More.

Professor Linda Powers:


Adipose tissue if a valuable source of stem cells for regenerative medicine, but purifying therapeutic quantities of stem cells requires costly antibodies. Instead of antibodies, Powers, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, is using small molecules tethered to magnetic beads for affinity purification of stem cells, stripping away the endothelial cells and fibroblasts that can cause undesirable mechanical tissue properties. Read More.

Professor Richard Ziolkowski:


Professor Richard Ziolkowski of the electrical and computer engineering department was at the seminal 1999 DARPA workshop on metamaterials and has been at the leading edge of metamaterials research ever since, particularly in the area of electrically small antennas. Read More.

Professor Young Jun Son:


Professor Young Jun Son of the systems and industrial engineering department is simulating human decision-making and social behavior to determine how people as crowds or individuals, act and react in various scenarios, from evacuating a burning factory, to shopping at a mall, to fleeing in panic from a terrorist attack. Read More.

Professor Michael Gehm:


Michael E. Gehm is assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, with a joint appointment in the College of Optical Sciences. As director of the Laboratory for Engineering Nontraditional Sensors, or LENS, his research, much of which is funded by DARPA and NSF, includes compressive measurement for spectral imaging, statistical and information theoretic methods in computational imaging, image formation and computational imaging in extremely large imaging arrays, and adaptive spectroscopy for rapid chemical detection. Read More.