Outstanding Faculty

Professor Don Edberg Earns the Distinguished Engineering Educator Award

Awarded by the The Engineers' Council, Professor Don Edberg from aerospace engineering was selected forthe Distinguished Engineering Educator Award. Edberg has taught at Cal Poly Pomona’s aerospace engineering department for over 20 years. In his long and fruitful tenure, he has advised over 700 students across 120 design teams in aircraft, spacecraft and launch vehicles. Learn more about him, straight from Edberg himself, here.

Professor Steve Dobbs Earns Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award

Aerospace engineering’s Professor Steve Dobbs was just one of eight faculty members to earn the Outstanding Advisor Award at Cal Poly Pomona. Endorsed by one of his students, he was acknowledged for helping students prepare to be industry ready for starting their careers through academic guidance, project team advising and finding internships.

Professor Vilupanur Ravi Receives Prestigious Technical Achievement Award for Materials Protection and Performance

Chemical and materials engineering Professor Vilupanur Ravi’s career has spanned more than three decades in academia and industrial research and development. His research and inventive contributions in the areas of materials processing, high temperature materials and protective coatings, high temperature corrosion, corrosion in molten salts, and biocorrosion have made a deep impression in the field. Therefore, this news doesn’t come as a great surprise: Ravi received the Willis Whitney Technical Achievement Award from the international organization Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP), the highest technical achievement award from the association.

$2.49 Million in NSF Grants to Power Student Success

Two major grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling nearly $2.5 million aims to boost opportunities and improve graduation rates for Cal Poly Pomona's diverse student population. The first project, “Bridging Institutions to Decrease Gaps in Engineering Education (BRIDGE),” supported with nearly $1 million in funding, aims to reduce the years needed to obtain a degree for transfer students. The project will create a transfer pathway program for the civil and mechanical engineering program that includes lower-division engineering courses.

The second project, “Career development in Construction Engineering Through Academy and Industry Network (CERTAIN),” aims to increase the number of high-achieving students from diverse backgrounds in the college's construction engineering and management (CEM) program. With nearly $1.5 million in funding, about $900,000 will fund 150 individual scholarships.

These projects will improve both the educational experience and outcomes for a diverse population of students. “Ultimately, we will produce a high-quality workforce.” said Jeyoung Woo, assistant professor in the civil engineering department, who is the principal investigator for both projects.

$1 Million NSF Grant Aimed at Closing Achievement Gaps

With high failure rates within two foundational classes— statics, and mechanics of materials—in the college’s civil engineering program, and a 10 percent achievement gap between underrepresented minority students (URMs) and non-URM students, a four-year, $1 million project funded by he National Science Foundation aims to remedy this issue. The project, “Closing Achievement Gaps in Core Undergraduate Civil Engineering Courses (CURE),” will offer greater support for students in the shape of a two-week summer bridge program, peer tutoring, and research experiences to enhance their knowledge of statics and mechanics of materials. Further, funds will help standardize the curriculum and academic rigor of the classes not only in the college, but at Mt. San Antonio College as well.

Assistant Professor Sunai Kim from the civil engineering department leads the effort as the principal investigator. “I hope our efforts will eliminate the achievement gap, continue to diversify our graduates and standardize the high academic rigor needed to succeed in future classes of our engineering program.”

$900,000 Award from NASA Fuels Development of Space Mission Technology

Cal Poly Pomona was one of 19 colleges in the country to earn NASA’s MUREP (Minority University Research and Education Project) Space Technology Artemis Research (STAR) award. Funding will advance the aerospace department’s CubeSat Technology Exploration Program (CubeSTEP) project, a collaboration between the university and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The work enabled by this grant will result in research and technology development concepts that align with NASA’s upcoming Artemis mission to the moon. Specifically, the university will collaborate with JPL to develop critical thermal system technology and demonstrate its performance in space. “I believe this grant presents a unique opportunity for our department to make significant strides in the field of aerospace engineering and establish stronger ties with NASA and JPL,” says Associate Professor Navid Nakhjiri from aerospace engineering and principal investigator. Assistant Professor Marco Maggia, also from aerospace engineering, serves as the co-principal investigator.

$300,000 Grant from the Navy Enables Exploration of Efficient Natural Language Processing

Electrical and computer engineering Assistant Professor Mohammad Aly received a three-year grant from the Naval Engineering Education Consortium's (NEEC) award.

This grant was earned for Aly’s work in low-power reconfigurable computing architecture for accelerating natural language processing (NLP). In short, NLP enables a machine to understand and respond to text or voice data. Aly, the principal investigator for the award, will work to uncover ways for NLP to be done with less computing power. Awarded across three years, the funding will allow Aly to further explore building reconfigurable computing processors specifically tailored for NLP applications, with a particular focus on optimizing power efficiency.

“The NEEC award represents a significant milestone for our team,” says Aly. “This critical support will undoubtedly propel our research endeavors to new heights, and we are eager to embark on this transformative journey.”