The Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering Department at the Missouri University of Science and Technology is pleased to welcome two new faculty members in the coming fall 2010 semester. Dr. Daniel Oerther and Dr. Joon-Ho Choi have joined the faculty this past August. The addition of these new faculty will broaden the on-going innovative environmental and architectural engineering research at Missouri S&T. 

 

Recent News
http://news.mst.edu/2011/01/pollution_may_be_key_ingredien.html
http://news.mst.edu/2011/04/graduate_gary_white_makes_2011.html

Dr. Kamal H. Khayat joined Missouri S&T in August of 2011 as the Vernon and Maralee Jones Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Center for Infrastructure Engineering Studies and the Center for Transportation Infrastructure and Safety. He specializes in the development of high-performance cement-based materials for structural applications and rehabilitation, particularly focusing on self-consolidating concrete (SCC) and high-performance concrete (HPC) behavior. His pioneering work in the area of SCC, starting in 1991, has contributed to its acceptance world-wide.

Dr. Khayat received his Ph.D. in civil engineering with an emphasis in materials from the University of California at Berkeley.  Prior to his appointment at Missouri S&T, he served as Director of the Center of Excellence on Concrete Infrastructure Engineering and Head of the Integrated Research Laboratory on Materials Valorization and Innovative and Durable Structures at the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada.  He was named the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Chair on High-Performance Flowable Concrete with Adapted Rheology in 2008, a consortium re-grouping 17 industrial partners from Canada and the US to develop a new generation of construction materials.

During his career, Dr. Khayat has authored and co-authored over 200 technical publications and received numerous awards for his research and services. He is an active member of ACI, RILEM, and CSA, and serves on several of their committees, including chairing ACI 237 (SCC) and RILEM 228 (Mechanical Properties of SCC).  He has also organized and chaired major international conferences in Canada, China, France, Poland, and the United Arab Emirates.

 

Dr. Bate joined the Department as an Assistant Professor in the geotechnical engineering area in June 2011. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, writing a dissertation on the mechanical and physicochemical behaviors of fine-grained soils modified with a controlled organic phase. Dr. Bate studied the geotechnical properties of organically modified soils experimentally, and then interpreted the results in the context of particulate interactions at nanometer level by exploring the electrokinetic potential and electrical permittivity of the soils. His research is not only of interest to the geotechnical engineering community, but also to the broad colloidal science community. Dr. Bate's research interests include contaminant containment and site remediation, in situ soil improvement, beneficial reuse of industrial waste materials, modeling of fundamental soil behavior using discrete element method, and unsaturated soil mechanics. He is also interested in interdisciplinary research that span the areas of biological remediation, petroleum engineering, energy efficiency in geoenvironmental engineering, and electromagnetic signal analysis.

Dr. Chien-Chung Chen joined the Missouri S&T faculty on the fall 2011 as an Assistant Teaching Professor. He earned his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 2009. His Ph. D. research focused on the prevention of damage to structures under impact/blast loading by utilizing a polymeric coating material, which involved advanced finite element simulation, mechanics of materials, fracture mechanics, mechanical test, and high strain rate impact test. In his research work, he has been collaborating with other disciplines, such as Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering. His master’s degree focused on the flexural behavior of composite beams (concrete encased steel beams) with an emphasis on seismic applications, which involved analytic work and full-scale structural tests. Before joining the Missouri S&T, Dr. Chen was an instructor and postdoctoral researcher in the civil and environmental engineering department at the Pennsylvania State University and then was a visiting professor in the civil engineering department at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. In these positions, he was responsible for teaching a variety of courses in Structural Engineering and conducting research in Bridge Engineering and Fracture Mechanics. In addition to the academic experiences, Dr. Chen also has industrial experiences in Structural Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering. He will continue to integrate all his professional experiences into his teaching at the Missouri S&T.

 

Dr. Ian Prowell comes to Missouri S&T as an Assistant Professor of the Structural Engineering program.  He earned his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego where he focused on the seismic response of power generation wind turbines.  Dr. Prowell expanded the modeling capabilities for wind turbines, and validated the models based on the results of in-situ testing and simulated earthquake loading of a full scale turbine, the tallest specimen ever tested on a shake table.  The research was funded by the National Science Foundation as a George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Research project and key partners included Oak Creek Energy Systems, Sandia National Laboratories, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  Results of his research are being integrated into Recommended Practices for Compliance of Large Wind Turbine Support Structures which will be jointly published by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Wind Energy Association.  In addition to addressing technical hurdles for renewable energy, Dr. Prowell’s research interests include challenges in structural dynamics, including implications of multiple simultaneous load sources on novel civil structures.

 

Dr. Daniel B. Oerther joined the Missouri S&T faculty on July 1, 2010, as the John A. and Susan Mathes Chair of Environmental Engineering and as Director of MO S&T's Environmental research Center.  An interdisciplinary researcher, Dr. Oerther combines his expertise in biotechnology with environmental engineering to form the discipline of environmental biotechnology.  Formerly the director of the Ohio Center of Excellence in Sustaining the Urban Environment at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Oerther integrates ecological theory, risk assessment and genomics to monitor metabolically active microbial populations in natural, engineered and clinical environments.

A licensed professional engineer, Dr. Oerther holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Illinois.  A former National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient, he has written more than 50 journal pages and delivered more than 200 presentations.  He has awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach in India and received the 2007 PresidentOs Excellence Award from the University of Cincinnati.  In 2009, his work to bring potable water to 20,000 villagers in Tanzania was recognized with the Honor Award from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers.

 

Dr. Joon-Ho Choi comes to Missouri S&T as Assistant Professor of the Architectural Engineering program. He earned his Ph.D. in Building Performance and Diagnostics from Carnegie Mellon University. During his Ph.D., he was involved with the WorkPlace 20•20 project of the General Services Administration, acquiring and analyzing data thorough on-site measurements of indoor environmental quality including thermal, visual, acoustic, spatial and air quality, as well as user environmental satisfaction. Dr. Choi’s interdisciplinary research interests cross architectural, mechanical and computational engineering as he seeks to understand and improve indoor environmental quality and its human physiological effects. His innovative Ph.D. research received state and national research grants from Green Building Alliance and from the Boston Society of Architects/AIA. At Missouri S&T,  Dr. Choi is continuing his research in on two topics: human-centered environmental building technology, and evidence-based sustainable building system design.