Congratulations to the following 11 faculty members at UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, each of whom was honored with a named professorship or named fellowship.
The named professorships and fellowships support the growth of some of the college’s key research areas and honor recipients’ research, teaching and scholarship. They all provide flexible funds; named professorships provide a salary supplement.
“The generosity of recent donors has made these possible,” said Dean Brett Peters. “I’m very grateful to those who chose to support our faculty and our mission in this way.”
Named professorships
Rob Cuzner was awarded a Richard and Joanne Grigg Professorship. He is an expert in electric grid compatibility and extreme power conversion. Cuzner directs UWM’s Center for Sustainable Electrical Energy Systems and is the UWM site director for GRAPES (GRid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems), a National Science Foundation/Industry-University Cooperative Research Center that is developing some of the methodologies all power electronic industries will use as they develop new technologies for the transition to a new electric grid.
Roshan D’Souza was awarded a Richard and Joanne Grigg Professorship. His research is advancing hemodynamics (blood flow) analysis of cardiovascular diseases through advanced processing of blood flow images from scans such as 4D Flow MRI using flow physics informed deep learning. Last year, the National Science Foundation supported his research in hemodynamics. He was previously awarded an Alan D. Kulwicki ’77 Faculty Fellowship.
Junjie Niu was awarded a Richard and Joanne Grigg Professorship for the second consecutive year. Niu is designing next-generation batteries for electronic devices and electronic vehicles that provide high-energy density and last longer; in other research he is addressing drinking water and groundwater decontamination.
Xiao Qin was awarded a Lawrence E. Sivak ’71 Professorship for the second consecutive year. Qin, a nationally renowned expert in transportation data analytics and highway safety, is training an interdisciplinary lens on solving both local and national transportation issues.
M. Habib Rahman was awarded a Richard and Joanne Grigg Professorship for a second consecutive year. Rahman is an expert in bio-robotics, including human-assist robots, service robots, mobile robots, medical robots, rehabilitation robotics, and exoskeleton robots for rehabilitation and activities of daily living (ADL) assistance.
Brooke Slavens was awarded a Richard and Joanne Grigg Professorship. She is an expert in rehabilitation engineering, orthopaedic biomechanics, and musculoskeletal imaging. Her work focuses on prevention of musculoskeletal disease and pathology of the upper extremity in children and adults with functional impairments.
Yin Wang was awarded a Lawrence E. Sivak ’71 Professorship for the second consecutive year. Wang is developing advanced and sustainable materials and technologies for water purification applications that aim to rid water of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceuticals, pesticides, heavy metals (e.g., lead) and metalloids (e.g., arsenic), and problematic oxyanions (e.g., nitrate, bromate).
Named fellowships
Ryo Amano was awarded a Richard and Joanne Grigg Faculty Fellowship for the second consecutive year. Amano is contributing to research in energy and power areas, including wind, hydro, biomass pyrolysis/gasification, gas turbines and combustion. He directs Wisconsin’s only U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center, which provides strategies to Wisconsin manufacturers and utilities to help them improve energy systems, reduce energy consumption, and enhance their plants’ decarbonization, cybersecurity and more.
Nathan Salowitz was awarded a Richard and Joanne Grigg Faculty Fellowship. Salowitz researches self-healing materials and embedded damage-sensing technologies. His work has applications to aerospace, mechanical and civic structures, with the goal of creating the ability to sense and repair damage while the structure is in service. Currently he’s designing sensors to reduce and simplify the copious amounts of data produced by systems that monitor for structural damage.
Konstantin Sobolev was awarded a Lawrence E. Sivak ’71 Faculty Fellowship for the second consecutive year. Sobolev’s research includes developing spray coatings that would both repel and sterilize virus-laden droplets, superhydrophobic and ice-phobic coatings for porous materials including concrete, and cost-saving, environmentally friendly ways to make concrete stronger and longer-lasting.
Hani Titi was awarded a Lawrence E. Sivak ’71 Faculty Fellowship. Titi’s research in pavement engineering is helping to extend the life of Wisconsin’s roadways. His research for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation—which included developing specifications and design input parameters for pavement and pavement materials– contributed to a better performing transportation infrastructure. Other research for WisDOT led to the implementation of an oversize-overweight vehicle-history analysis portal that visualizes routing trends, identifies heavily traveled highway segments and intersections, evaluates routing efficiency and more.
The names behind the college’s professorships and fellowships
Richard and Joanne Grigg
Engineering alumnus Richard (Dick) Grigg (’04, ’75, ’70) devoted his career to advancing new energy technologies. After earning his BS and MS degrees in engineering from UWM, Dick went on to become the president and CEO of We Generation, the electric generation arm of We Energies. In 2004, he joined FirstEnergy Corp., an Akron, Ohio-based power company, where he retired as executive vice president and president of FirstEnergy Utilities in 2010. Dick and his wife, Joanne Grigg, died in 2018 and 2016, respectively.
Lawrence E. Sivak
Larry Sivak earned his BS in civil engineering from UWM in 1971. He has held many key positions in civil engineering during his 40-year career and experienced many unique projects, including harbor maintenance and flood control with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and participating in the Milwaukee Water Pollution Abatement Program.