Pomona's Outstanding Faculty

Dr. Seema Shah-Fairbank

Associate Professor, Civil Engineering
Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award—American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Dr. Seema Shah-Fairbank’s efforts as faculty advisor for the ASCE student chapter at Cal Poly Pomona has led to professional development workshops and signature outreach events that have given 800 middle school students exposure to the field of civil engineering. Student members credit her for the chapter receiving the ASCE Certificate of Commendation, a recognition awarded to the top 5 percent of 300+ ASCE student chapters around the world.

Dr. Paul Nissenson

Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Outstanding Teaching Award—American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Pacific Southwest Section

Dr. Paul Nissenson has dedicated his career to leveraging new technologies to reach beyond the classroom and improve student success. Using a flipped classroom pedagogy, he led an interdisciplinary team and transformed one mechanical engineering bottleneck course by reducing failure rates by two-thirds in that course—from 34 percent down to 11 percent. He was also a lead in developing ME Online, a video tutorial library, which is an open educational resource containing over 600 videos created by engineering faculty. Approximately 140 were created by Nissenson and ME Online’s videos have over 5 million views.

Dr. Wen Cheng

Professor, Civil Engineering
Excellence in Teaching Award — Provost’s Award

Dr. Wen Cheng was the principle investigator on two grants from UC CONNECT (University of California Center on Economic Competitiveness in Transportation). This program aims to prepare students for industrial practice and increase their passion to pursue higher degrees. He received more than $2.5 million external funding and published about 75 peer-reviewed papers with students since December 2009. He is the recipient of both the national and regional Outstanding Teaching Award from the civil engineering honor society Chi Epsilon.

Journal Editorships and Research

Dr. Norali Pernalete, electrical and computer engineering professor, received the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for the 2020-21 academic year. One of over 800 U.S. citizens selected for the program, Pernalete is teaching and conducting research at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain. She is studying the use of robotic haptic devices for assessment and therapy purposes for eye-hand coordination and upper-limb disabilities.

CSUPERB Grant Powers Nanofiber Research

Dr. Farhana Abedin (left), electro-mechanical engineering technology assistant professor, received the CSUPERB new investigator’s grant to research the development of multifunctional nanofiber for disinfection and filtration of water. This unique nanofiber can kill bacteria upon contact and is free of common disinfecting reagents, eliminating the risk of reagent contamination in water. Collaborating on this research is chemical and materials engineering associate professor Dr. Laila Jallo (right) and biological sciences professor Dr. Junjun Liu (not pictured).

Two Faculty Members Named Air Force Research Lab Fellows

Dr. Mohamed Aly (left), electrical and computer engineering assistant professor, and Dr. Zahra Sotoudeh (right), aerospace engineering associate professor, were selected as fellows for the 2020 Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty fellowship (AFRL SFFP) program. The program offers fellows opportunities to conduct impactful research across the AFRL’s many labs. Aly’s research is on building a computing platform that can resist the cyberattack potential of quantum computers. Sotoudeh’s research aims to develop a more accurate and computationally-efficient understanding of the behavior of modern aircraft encountering gust.

Faculty Member Begins Collaboration with Caltech

Dr. Farbod Khoshnoud, electromechanical engineering technology assistant professor, is a visiting associate at Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST). At this newly developed center, Khoshnoud will further his research in quantum robotics and autonomy with Cal Poly Pomona research students and develop partnerships with CAST for research funding opportunities.

Cal Poly Pomona Faculty Editors for Journals

Several College of Engineering faculty comprised a team of five editors for the international Journal of Nanomaterials. They compiled a collection of 11 peer reviewed papers for a special issue on hydrothermal synthesis of nanomaterials. Dr. Yong Gan (top-left), mechanical engineering professor, was the lead guest editor. Dr. Jenny Yu (top-right), electrical and computer engineering associate professor, and Dr. Mingheng Li (bottom-left), chemical and materials engineering professor, served as editors. Further, Li served as guest editor with a Cal State Long Beach assistant professor on a special issue for the international journal, Mathematics. The special issue compiled 15 peer reviewed papers to bring together recent progress in mathematics applied in complex engineering problems, like modeling and simulation, optimization and machine learning.

Dr. Kevin Anderson (bottom-right), mechanical engineering professor, is associate editor for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ (ASME) Journal of Solar Energy Engineering: Including Wind Energy and Building Energy Conservation. He will be maintaining the quality and standards of the journal until 2023.