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2010-11-01: Department welcomes new faculty members

Rodney J. Simmons, Ph.D., CSP
Associate Professor of Health, Safety and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Rod Simmons is Associate Professor of Health, Safety and Environmental  (HSE) Engineering, with a primary assignment to support the new M.Eng. degree program in HSE Engineering at PI. He came to PI after two years at the other end of Asia, where he served as a visiting faculty member at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Tunghai University (Taiwan). Previously, he was Associate Professor and Safety Program Chair at Illinois State University, Adjunct Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, and technical director for the Board of Certified Safety Professionals.  He has consulted for a number of major corporations, including Boeing, General Electric, Caterpillar, Jacobs Engineering, and Procter & Gamble, in addition to assignments with the US Navy’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Naval Surface Warfare Center, NASA-Ames Research Center, Kuwait Petroleum Company, Kuwait University, EQUATE, China Airlines, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and others. He is the only faculty member in the world to be certified by examination in five areas of professional safety practice. He completed his Ph.D. at Texas A&M University, and also holds advanced degrees from Harvard University and California State University. A popular keynote speaker, he is the author of over 50 technical articles and presentations, in addition to co-authoring two books: An Engineering Approach to Occupational Safety and Health in Business and Industry and System Safety and Risk Management. He is serving a 4-year term as Director for Education and Professional Development for the System Safety Society, and is Associate Editor for the Journal of System Safety. He’s the only two-time recipient of the System Safety Society’s Educator of the Year Award (1992 and 2009), and received the President’s Award in 2010.

Dr. Nader Vahdati
Associate Professor & Deputy Chair, Mechanical Engineering

He received his B.S. (Magna Cum Laude) and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Portland, Oregon.  In 1989 he graduated from the University of California, Davis with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Dynamic Systems and Controls. Prior to joining the PI, he was an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore for 9 years, and prior to NTU, he spent 12 years at Lord Corporation, an aerospace and automotive company, located in Erie Pennsylvania.

His research interests include active, and semi-active vibration and noise control using advance suspension systems, MR and ER-fluid devices, hard disk drive dynamic modeling, energy harvesters and storage technology, new sources of energy, fracture mechanics or metal and rubber components, and biomedical devices. He has supervised 6 completed M.S. theses, 3 completed Ph.D. dissertations. He has published over 45 journal and conference articles. He is member of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Dr. Oleg Shiryayev
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Oleg Shiryayev was born in 1979 in Moscow, Russia. He studied mechanical engineering at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, USA, and received his B.S.M.E. degree in 2002. Oleg continued his studies with Dr. Joseph Slater and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 2003 and 2008 respectively.

During his academic career Dr. Shiryayev worked on many different research projects involving nonlinear dynamics. He investigated a method for identification of nonlinear state space models for fluttering panels, and developed a parameter estimation technique for modeling of nonlinear behavior of bolted joints. He participated in the development of a model of a jet engine for studying its dynamics during in-flight power extraction, and helped develop a novel approach for passive vibration suppression using shunted piezoelectric actuators. His recent research has been focused on development of an automated vibration based technology for detection of fatigue cracks in turbomachinery components.

Dr. Imad Barsoum
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Barsoum received a M.Sc. with honors in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. degree in Solid Mechanics from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden. He has experience from teaching in undergraduate and graduate courses in Solid Mechanics at KTH.

Since he graduated he has been working as a research engineer in the field of transmission gearboxes and gear technology at the R&D division at Scania, which is a heavy truck manufacturer in Sweden. He is also co-founder of an engineering consulting firm in Sweden, Barsoum Engineering Consulting Inc., specialized in stress analysis and fatigue design of load carrying structures.

Dr. Barsoum’s research interest is in the field of mechanics of material including micromechanical, constitutive and ductile failure modelling of high strength steels under complex loading conditions, plasticity theory and mixed mode fracture mechanics. He is author of several journal papers and has presented his work at several international conferences. Dr. Barsoum’s work has been internationally recognized by distinguished researchers for which he received the annual doctoral student award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2007.

Dr Yap Yit Fatt
Research/Teaching Associate, Mechanical Engineering

Dr Yap received his Ph.D. (2007) in Mech. Eng. from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, M. Eng. (2002) and B. Eng. (2000) from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). For his Ph.D., he worked on modeling of small scale multiphase flow problems. He was a research fellow in NTU where he worked on modeling of two-phase flows with the narrow-band particle level-set method. His research interests include, but are not limited to, the development and application of numerical methods for problems involving heat transfer and fluid flow.