ME Faculty Directory

Creating knowledge through research. Educating the next generation of engineers. Innovating and improving society through technology. Leading the profession. These are the hallmarks of the mechanical engineering department at Iowa State University. Our faculty members are experienced researchers and educators who are grounded in fundamental disciplines and focused on solving timely problems that address important national and global technological needs.

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Professors
Lecturers
Adjunct Professors and Courtesy Appointments
Emeritus Professors

Professors

James Bernard Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Engineering	Real-time applications of computer modeling and simulation, particularly vehicle dynamics applications, and interactions between technology and globalization
Tim Bigelow Assistant Professor—Department of Mechanical Engineering and of Electrical and Computer Engineering	Biosciences and engineering, medical ultrasound, physical properties of tissue, and diagnostic and therapeutic use of ultrasound in treating disease
Robert C. Brown Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering Gary and Donna Hoover Chair in Mechanical Engineering	Conversion of biorenewable resources into bioenergy and biobased products, combustion, gasification, fast pyrolysis, hydrogen energy, and hydrodynamics and heat transfer in fluidized beds
Mark Bryden Associate Professor	Virtual engineering of fluids and heat transfer systems within collaborative, immersive, and synthetic environments
Abhijit Chandra Professor	Mechanics of manufacturing processes, nanoscale surface modification, multiscale and multiphysics modeling, renewable energy, and boundary element method
LeAnn Faidley Assistant Professor	Active/smart materials, structures, and systems; characterization, modeling, application, and control of magnetically activated materials; magnetorheological elastomers; and smart materials for medical devices
Baskar Ganapathysubramanian William March Scholar in Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor	Computational mechanics, applied mathematics, parallel and high performance computing, uncertainty in complex systems, and materials by design
Ted Heindel Professor Associate Chair for Academic Affairs	X-ray flow visualization; fluid mechanics; multiphase flow hydrodynamics; gas-liquid, gas-solid, and gas-liquid-solid multiphase flows; and gas-liquid mass transfer
Atul Kelkar Professor	Control theory, robust and nonlinear control, acoustic noise control, vibration control, flexible multibody dynamics, integrated design via multiobjective optimization, robotics, and neural networks
Gap-Yong Kim Assistant Professor	Manufacturing science at the microscale, microscale deformation processes, semisolid forming, modeling and fabrication of microreactors, and energy conversion devices (fuel cells, fuel processors, etc.)
Song-Charng Kong Assistant Professor	Experimental engine combustion and emissions studies, bio-renewable energy utilization in internal combustion engines, numerical combustion study and model development using detailed chemical kinetics with computational fluid dynamics, and optimization of engine performance via experiments and numerical models
Valery I. Levitas Schafer 2050 Challenge Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering and of Aerospace Engineering Courtesy appointment with Department of Material Science and Engineering	Stress- and strain-induced phase transformations, high pressure mechanics and mechanochemistry, structural changes in materials via virtual melting, multiscale modeling, strain-induced chemical reactions, large inelastic deformation of solids, continuum thermodynamics and kinetics, instabilities in materials and structures, micromechanics and nanomechanics, energetic and nanoenergetic materials, superhard materials, smart materials
Greg R. Luecke Associate Professor	Robotics and control, multibody dynamics and simulation, and artificial neural networks for control
J. Adin Mann Associate Professor	Acoustics, noise control, and design optimization
Gregory M. Maxwell Associate Professor Director, Industrial Assessment Center	Energy usage in buildings and HVAC systems, industrial energy efficiency, and nuclear energy
Terry Meyer Assistant Professor	Laser imaging and spectroscopy for reacting fluid flow and sprays, biorenewable fuels, combustion, power and propulsion, gas turbines, scramjets, hypersonic vehicles, and internal combustion engines
Palaniappa A. Molian Professor	Materials and manufacturing with focus on laser processing, nanotechnology, microelectromechanical systems, and solid freeform fabrication
Ron M. Nelson Professor	Energy conversion and utilization, environmental control, thermal system optimization, and applied artificial intelligence
James Oliver Professor Director, CyberInnovation Institute Director, Virtual Reality Applications Center	Design and manufacturing process automation using geometric modeling, computer graphics, visualization, simulation, optimization, virtual reality, and human-computer interaction
Michael G. Olsen Associate Professor	Experimental fluid mechanics and microelectromechanical systems
Pranav Shrotriya Virginia and William Binger Assistant Professor	Mechanical response of micro- and nanoscale structures, experimental and computational mechanics at small-length scales, mechanics of surface stress sensors and molecular adsorption, stress-assisted dissolution and damage of biomedical implants, and mechanics of manufacturing processes
Shankar Subramaniam Associate Professor	Spray modeling, modeling and simulation of gas-particle flows and granular flows, combustion, turbulent reactive flows, mixing, stochastic models, particle methods, and computational fluid dynamics
Sriram Sundararajan Associate Professor Associate Chair for Graduate Study and Research Director of Graduate Education	Surface engineering, micro- and nanoscale tribology (friction, lubrication, and wear), multiscale mechanical behavior of materials, scanning probe microscopy, and thin film characterization using three-dimensional atom probe microscopy
Judy Vance Professor	Virtual Reality applications in mechanical engineering including virtual assembly, virtual manufacturing and mechanism synthesis; optimization; fundamentals of engineering design including design ideation and concept generation
Xinwei Wang Associate Professor	Laser-assisted bio-imaging; thermal transport in nanoscale and nanostructured materials; novel technique development for thermal conductivity measurement of films, coatings, and micro- and nanoscale wires/tubes; large-scale parallel molecular dynamics simulation; hybrid atomistic-macroscale modeling; laser-material interaction; and laser-assisted nanostructuring
Jonathan Wickert Larry and Pam Pithan Professor of Mechanical Engineering Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering	Mechanical vibration and noise control; continuous and multibody systems dynamics; applied mechanics; and applications in computer data storage, flexible web material manufacturing, and friction-vibration interaction
Eliot Winer Assistant Professor	Internet technology for large-scale collaborative design; analysis, visualization, and interaction with medical data studies; multidisciplinary design synthesis; computer-aided design and graphics; applications in optimal design; scientific visualization; and virtual reality modeling for large-scale design
Song Zhang Assistant Professor	Three-dimensional optical metrology, machine and computer vision, virtual reality, human-computer interaction, nondestructive evaluation, and biometrics
Qingze Zou Assistant Professor	Precision positioning, inversion-based control theory, scanning probe microscopy, and nanofabrication

Lecturers
William Bathie Lecturer Professor Emeritus	Gas Turbines
Sebastien Feve Lecturer	Tire research, fundamentals of thermodynamics, engineering education, international & study abroad opportunities
Max Gassman Lecturer	Machine design, hydraulic power, shredding machines, and mathematical modeling and simulation
Matt Hagge Lecturer	Computational modeling, wood, combustion, pyrolysis, thermodynamics, and visualization of bloodstain pattern analysis
Jim Heise Lecturer	Product design engineering, project management, design for Lean Sigma®/Six Sigma®, transportation design/vehicle dynamics, human/product interface design, and SAE design competition series
Rajeev Madhavan Nair Lecturer	Laser-based flexible fabrication, nanotechnology, and computer-aided design
Zhaohui (George) Qin Lecturer	Fluid mechanics and thermal systems
Gloria Starns Senior Lecturer	Mechanism design and analysis, numerical optimization, artificial intelligence applications in engineering, and engineering education

Adjunct Professors and Courtesy Appointments
Robert Anex Adjunct Associate Professor Associate Professor, Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering	Life cycle assessment and biorenewable resources/bio-based industries
Ashraf Bastawros Adjunct Associate Professor Associate Professor, Aerospace Engineering	Micro- and nanosurface machining, experimental methods to study structure-property relationships, thermo-mechanical characteristics of porous solids and biological materials, mechanics of cellular materials, and mechanics of manufacturing processes at the micro- and nanoscale
Joseph N. Gray Adjunct Associate Professor Physicist, Center for Nondestructive Evaluation	Nondestructive evaluation techniques using x-ray and neutron radiography methods and modeling of x-ray and neutron image formation processes
John McClelland Adjunct Associate Professor Senior Physicist, Ames Laboratory	Molecular spectroscopy of materials and analytical instrument automation
Richard Stone Courtesy Appointment Professor, Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering	Human-computer interface design, adaptive automation, modeling of congitive processes, and human decision making

Emeritus Professors

Shyam Bahadur	William Bathie	Joseph R. Baumgarten	John Brighton
Gerald Colver	William Cook	Richard Danofsky	Paul DeJong
Arvid Eide	Jerry L. Hall	Richard Hendrickson	Alexander Henkin
Alfred Joensen	George Junkhan	Patrick Kavanagh	Charles Mischke
Ted Okiishi	Michael B. Pate	Leo Peters	Richard H. Pletcher
Donald Roberts	George Serovy	Howard Shapiro	Bernard Spinrad
Delmar Van Meter	Monroe Wechsler

Department of Mechanical Engineering