Project Category: Engineering

Devesh Ranjan

Devesh Ranjan was named the Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. School Chair in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and took over the role on January 1, 2022. He previously served as the Associate Chair for Research, and Ring Family Chair in the Woodruff School. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering and serves as a co-director of the $100M Department of Defense-funded University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH). At Georgia Tech, Ranjan has held several leadership positions including chairing ME’s Fluid Mechanics Research Area Group (2017 – 2018), serving as ME’s Associate Chair for Research (2019-present), and as co-chair of the “Hypersonics as a System” task-force, and serving as Interim Vice-President for Interdisciplinary Research (Feb 2021-June 2021).

Ranjan joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2014. Before coming to Georgia Tech, he was a director’s research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2008) and Morris E. Foster Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at Texas A&M University (2009-2014). He earned a bachelor’s degree from the NIT-Trichy (India) in 2003, and master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the UW-Madison in 2005 and 2007 respectively, all in mechanical engineering.

Ranjan’s research focuses on the interdisciplinary area of power conversion, complex fluid flows involving shock and hydrodynamic instabilities, and the turbulent mixing of materials in extreme conditions, such as supersonic and hypersonic flows. Ranjan is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and has received numerous awards for his scientific contributions, including the DOE-Early Career Award (first GT recipient), the NSF CAREER Award, and the US AFOSR Young Investigator award. He was also named the J. Erskine Love Jr. Faculty Fellow in 2015. He was invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s 2016 US Frontiers in Engineering Symposium. For his educational efforts and mentorship activity, he has received CATERPILLAR Teaching Excellence Award from College of Engineering at Texas A&M, as well as 2013 TAMU ASME Professor Mentorship Award from TAMU student chapter of the ASME. At Georgia Tech, Ranjan served as a Provost’s Teaching and Learning Fellow (PTLF) from 2018-2020, and was named 2021 Governor’s Teaching Fellow. He was also named Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Fellow for 2020-21.

Ranjan is currently part of a 10-member Technical Screening Committee of the NAE’s COVID-19 Call for Engineering Action taskforce, an initiative to help fight the coronavirus pandemic. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Shock Waves and was a former Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering.

Christopher Rozell

Christopher J. Rozell received a B.S.E. degree in Computer Engineering and a B.F.A. degree in Music in 2000 from the University of Michigan.  He attended graduate school at Rice University, receiving the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 2002 and 2007, respectively. Following graduate school he joined the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral scholar.  Dr. Rozell joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008 where he is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (Biomedical Engineering and Interactive Computing, by courtesy).    His research interests live at the intersection of machine learning, signal processing, complex systems, computational neuroscience and biotechnology. Dr. Rozell previously served as co-Director of the Neural Engineering Center and as the Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professor at Georgia Tech, where his lab is affiliated with the Center for Machine Learning and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. In 2014, Dr. Rozell was one of six international recipients of the Scholar Award in Studying Complex Systems from the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative, as well as receiving a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a Sigma Xi Young Faculty Research Award. In addition to his research activity, Dr. Rozell was received numerous teaching awards, including the Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award (2019), the CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (2013) and the Class of 1940 Teaching Effectiveness Award (2013).

Felipe Quiroz

Felipe G. Quiroz trained as a biomedical engineer in his native Colombia before obtaining a PhD from the Biomedical Engineering department of Duke University. He then trained in cell biology as a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University. Dr. Quiroz is currently an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. Dr. Quiroz and his team mine protein self-assembly in engineered and biological material systems. He currently holds a Career Award at the Scientific Interface from Burroughs Welcome Fund.

G. P. Bud Peterson

G. P. “Bud” Peterson is currently President Emeritus and Regents Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the 11th president from April 1, 2009 through August 31, 2019. Peterson came to Georgia Tech from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he served as Chancellor. He previously served as provost at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York and was a member of the faculty at Texas A&M for nearly 20 years, serving in numerous administrative roles. His research interests focus on the fundamental aspects of phase-change heat transfer, including the heat transfer in reduced gravity environments, boiling from enhanced surfaces, and some of the earliest work in the area of flow and phase-change heat transfer in microchannels. More recent investigations have included fundamental applications of phase-change heat transfer to the field of biotechnology, including the insitu-treatment of cancerous tissue using hypo and hyperthermia and arresting epileptic seizures through the rapid cooling of localized tissue in the brain. Peterson earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, a second bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, and a master’s degree in Engineering, all from Kansas State University. He earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University. He and his wife, Val, have four adult children, two of whom are Georgia Tech alumni and four grandchildren.

Nga Lee Ng

Dr. Nga Lee Ng is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and was a postdoctoral scientist at Aerodyne Research Inc.  Dr. Ng’s research focuses on the understanding of the chemical mechanisms of aerosol formation and composition, as well as their health effects. Her group combines laboratory chamber studies and ambient field measurements to study aerosols using advanced mass spectrometry techniques. Dr. Ng serves as an editor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Her research contribution has been recognized by the Sheldon K. Friedlander Award from the American Association for Aerosol Research, the EPA Early Career Award, the Health Effects Institute Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award, and the NSF CAREER Award.      

Azad Naeemi

Azad Naeemi is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University, Tehran, Iran, in 1994, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech, Atlanta, in 2001 and 2003, respectively. His research crosses the boundaries of materials, devices, circuits and systems, investigating integrated circuits based on conventional and emerging nanoscale devices and interconnects. He serves at the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Exploratory Computational Devices and Circuits (JXCDC) and an Editor of the IEEE Electron Devices. He is the recipient of the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) Paul Rappaport Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and an SRC Inventor Recognition Award.

Bernard Kippelen

Dr. Kippelen was born and raised in Alsace, France. He studied at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg where he received a Maitrise in Solid-State Physics in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Nonlinear Optics in 1990. In August 2003, Dr. Kippelen joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He served as Director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE) from 2011-2019. He currently serves as co-President of the Lafayette Institute, a major optoelectronics commercialization initiative that is based at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in Metz, France. He currently holds 25 patents and has co-authored over 270 refereed publications and 14 book chapters. His publications have received over 25,000 citations and his h-index is 82 (Google Scholar). He served as chair and co-chair of numerous international conferences on organic optoelectronic materials and devices and as deputy editor of Energy Express. He was the founding editor of Energy Express.

Nolan Hertel

Dr. Hertel is a professor in the NRE Program at Georgia Tech and previously was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin.  He received his BS and MS in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois. He is an international recognized expert in neutron dosimetry and computational dosimetry.  He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Georgia. Dr. Hertel holds a joint faculty appointment in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center for Radiation Protection Knowledge.  He is the immediate Past-President of the Health Physics Society (HPS).  Dr. Hertel has received the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award of the HPS and the Rockwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Nuclear Society Radiation Protection and Shielding Division.  He chairs the DOE Russian Health Studies Scientific Review Group.  He co-chaired the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements committee that  published ICRU Publication 95 (Operational Quantities For External Radiation Exposure) which recommends a new set of quantities to be used in the measurement of radiation dose. He was a co-author of the EPA Federal Guidance Report 15 (External Exposure to Radionuclides in Air, Water and Soil) and of the International Commission on Radiation Protection Report 116 (Conversion Coefficients For Radiological Protection Quantities For External Radiation Exposures).  These documents are used to support radiation protection regulations around the world.  He currently serves on a Radiation Effects Research Foundation committee that is assessing a possible update of the computed doses to atomic bomb survivors.

Samuel Graham

Dr. Samuel Graham, Jr. is a professor and the Chair of the Woodruff School of Mechanical.    He also holds a joint appointment with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where he collaborates on energy related research.  Prior to coming to Georgia Tech, he was a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratory.  Today, he serves on the Advisory Board of the Engineering Science Research Foundation of Sandia National Laboratory and the Emerging Technologies Technical Advisory Committee of the US Department of Commerce. His research focuses on the development thermal management strategies for electronics made from wide bandgap semiconductors.  

Aldo Ferri

Professor Aldo Ferri was born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey. Both of his parents immigrated from Italy where neither of them finished elementary school. Aldo received his BS degree from Lehigh University in 1981 and his PhD degree from Princeton University in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1985. Since 1985, he has been a faculty member in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. In 2010, he became the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Ferri conducts research in the areas of dynamics, vibrations, controls, and engineering education.  He has always had a passion for teaching and received the Jack M. Zeigler Outstanding Educator Award in 2010 and received the Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award from Georgia Tech in 2016. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.