New Faculty Already Making Research Headlines
Here we proudly feature faculty who have joined our ranks less than four years ago and are already contributing greatly to our top-notch research agenda. For additional examples and research news, please visit our Research News webpage and visit our News webpage.
Dr. Katie Costigan (Assistant Professor of Geosciences) is developing a summer program that will provide ten undergraduate students for three summers (2018-2020) the opportunity to participate in research on topics in watershed and coastal processes and resources within the southern Louisiana environments. Each participant will work for eight weeks directly with a faculty advisor in the departments of Biology, Civil Engineering, or Geosciences and with local environmental organizations. Her work is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Khalid Elgazzar (Assistant Professor of Computing and Informatics) is working on dynamic access control in internet of things (IoT) deployments. His research is studying major access control and privacy challenges in IoT environments and developing new techniques that will make it easier and safer for widespread adoption of IoT. Dr. Elgazzar's work is funded by research competitiveness award from the Louisiana Board of Regents.
Dr. Kelly Robinson (Assistant Professor of Biology) and her co-researchers are examining whether the 2010 oil spill diminished plankton and fish populations and the impact it had on food web and oceanic fisheries. Dr. Robinson and her team will use plankton-imaging technology and classification software to accelerate identifying and counting the plankton collected during earlier Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GOMRI) funded expeditions. Plankton are microscopic aquatic organisms that are often too weak to swim against the ocean currents, so they generally go with the flow. Their easygoing ways should not obscure the vital part they play in the ocean's food chain, however. An environmental threat such as an oil spill could carry implications beyond the sea. Her research is funded by a grant from GOMRI.
Dr. Mohsen Amini Salehi (Assistant Professor of Computing and Informatics) is working on a collaborative work with Perceptive Intelligence, LLC, a Louisiana company to provide a secure semantic search for big data-scale multi-source datasets in cloud. The research work will potentially allow Perceptive Intelligence to securely search databases and assist law enforcement agencies with its software. This work is supported by a grant from the State of Louisiana.
Dr. Beth Stauffer (Assistant Professor of Biology) is investigating the potential impacts of restoration activities on phytoplankton communities in the Atchafalaya-Vermilion Bay system. She is studying protistan and phytoplankton community dynamics and how these populations contribute to and are affected by environmental perturbations in coastal and estuarine ecosystems, including harmful algal blooms (HABs) and coastal hypoxia. Dr. Stauffer's work is funded by a grant from Louisiana Sea Grant.
Dr. Yu Wang (Assistant Professor of Chemistry) is working on high precision synthesis of complex blocked polymer brushes and mono-disperse star copolymers to be able to answer deeper question of how far one can push the precise design of polymeric architectures. Such work can potentially trigger fundamental advances in organic electronics, nano diagnostics and therapeutics. His work is funded by research competitiveness award from the Louisiana Board of Regents.
Dr. Hui Yan (Assistant Professor of Chemistry) is working on synthesis and characterization of mesoporous ceria and Pt-doped ceria, and investigation of water-gas shift reaction on mesoporous catalysts. The research will potentially benefit petroleum and chemical industries in Louisiana. Her work is funded by research competitiveness award from the Louisiana Board of Regents.
Dr. Rui Zhang (Assistant Professor of Geosciences) is working on a project to provide new geological information on vast amount of subsurface data that exists in Louisiana but has been largely under-utilized for near-surface engineering applications outside of the energy sector. The project is designed to produce data and results essential to understanding fundamental geologic processes operating in coastal Louisiana, with clear relevance to current and future Master Plan objectives. Dr. Zhang's research is funded by a grant from Restore Act Center of Excellence.