The 2024 NSF ENG CAREER Workshop speakers will present throughout the workshop on selected topics relevant to CAREER Proposal preparation.
Esra Büyüktahtakιn Toy
Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Virginia Tech
Esra Büyüktahtakιn Toy, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) at Virginia Tech. Dr. Toy’s research focuses on advancing the state-of-the-art in multi-stage stochastic programming with a mix of optimization theory and machine learning algorithms. Dr. Toy’s work has been pioneering epidemics modeling and logistics optimization to tackle epidemics in a variety of contexts, including healthcare, agriculture, and forestry. Examples of applications include infectious diseases that ravage the human body, such as COVID-19, Ebola virus disease (EVD), and HIV, and invasive species that create havoc on forests, such as the emerald ash borer (EAB) in North America and Canada, Zebra Mussels harming native species in Great Lakes, and Sericea Lespedeza damaging agricultural products in the Great Plains. Her work helped policymakers optimize resource allocation strategies to fight harmful invasions impacting human and environmental health. Dr. Toy is the recipient of the 2016 NSF CAREER Award. She has also been awarded various projects by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Forest Service, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center (MAISRC). She has published her research in 44 flagship journals in Operations Research and ISE. She has served as the President-Elect and President of INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) and is the associate editor for the Springer Nature Operations Research Forum journal.
Darryl Dickerson
Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Florida International University
Darryl Dickerson is an assistant professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Florida International University where he directs the Inclusive Complex Tissue Engineering Laboratory. His technical research focuses on transforming multiscale biomechanical and mechanobiological insights into biomanufacturing processes enabling the creation of personalized, fully functional engineered tissues with a specific focus on inclusive science and engineering. This work connects to Dr. Dickerson’s broader vision to make engineering spaces more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive which includes education research focused on faculty-driven institutional transformation. He has served as the Chief Executive and Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Society of Black Engineers, expanding the strategic focus of NSBE’s Pre-College Initiative by founding the Summer Engineering Experience for Kids (SEEK), which has served more than 30,000 students since its inception. After completing his PhD, Dr. Dickerson founded Advanced Regenerative Technologies to translate his academic benchtop work to clinical practice, leading to the introduction of BioEnthesis, a rotator cuff tendon enthesis repair product, currently in clinical use.
Kerrie Douglas
Associate Professor of Engineering Education
Purdue University
Kerrie Douglas is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She holds a PhD in Educational Psychology and Masters of Science in Education from Purdue. She is the lead of the Science and Ethics for Educational Data (SEED) lab. Her research is focused on improving methods of evaluation and assessment in large-scale engineering learning contexts. She works on problems of validity, equity and how to make inferences about diverse groups of learners. She has been Primary Investigator or Co-PI on more than $24 million of external research awards. In 2020, she received an NSF RAPID award to study engineering instructional decisions and how students were supported during the time of emergency remote instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since May of 2020, she’s been invited to speak at 14 national and international events about how to support and assess students in online learning environments. In 2021, she received the NSF Early CAREER award to study improving the fairness of assessment in engineering classrooms.
Courtney Faber
Assistant Professor of Engineering Education
University at Buffalo
Courtney Faber, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo (UB). Prior to joining UB in August of 2023, she was a Research Associate Professor and Senior Lecture in Engineering Fundamentals at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She was also the Director of the Fundamentals of Engineering and Computing Teaching in Higher Education Certificate Program. Her research focuses on empowering engineering education scholars to be more effective at impacting transformational change in engineering and developing educational experiences that consider epistemic thinking. She develops and uses innovative research methods that allow for deep investigations of constructs such as epistemic thinking, identity, and agency. Dr. Faber has a B.S. in Bioengineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education from Clemson University and a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University. Among other awards for her research, she was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2022 to study epistemic negotiations on interdisciplinary engineering education research teams.
Allison Godwin
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Cornell University
Allison Godwin, Ph.D., is the Dr. G. Stephen Irwin ’67, ’68 Professor of Engineering Education Research in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. Her research focuses on how identity, among other affective factors, influences diverse groups of students to choose engineering and persist in engineering. She also studies how different experiences within the practice and culture of engineering foster or hinder belonging and identity development. Prof. Godwin graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education. Her research earned her a 2016 National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1554057). She also collaborated on an NSF EAGER (1837808/1837805) focused on what makes successful NSF CAREER proposals and has developed a framework and tools for proposal preparation. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Engineering Education and Chemical Engineering Education.
Princess Imoukhuede
Professor of Bioengineering
University of Washington
Dr. Imoukhuede is a distinguished bioengineer renowned for her groundbreaking research on blood vessels and their regulation. She holds an SB in Chemical Engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Caltech, where she made history as the first African-American woman to receive this degree.
Throughout her academic career, Dr. Imoukhuede has been recognized for her research and her commitment to social responsibility. She has received numerous awards and professional development grants, including a United Negro College Fund/Merck Fellowship. She has also served on the board of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and the nominations committee of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and has been inducted as a Fellow in both.
Currently, Dr. Imoukhuede is the Hunter and Dorothy Simpson Endowed Professor and Chair of Bioengineering at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on blood vessel formation and the administration of oxytocin during childbirth. Her contributions to the field have earned her numerous honors, including the BMES 2021 Mid-Career Award and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Julián Norato
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
University of Connecticut
Dr. Julián Norato is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut. He is a Castleman Professor of Engineering Innovation at UConn, and Director of Graduate Studies for the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering. Prof. Norato serves as the Assistant Director of the Digital Design Research, Analysis and Manufacturing (DREAM) Center. Prior to joining UConn in 2014, he worked for nine years for Caterpillar, where he was responsible for the Product Optimization Group. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005. Prof. Norato is a recipient of a 2017 Young Investigator Program award from the US Office of Naval Research, a 2018 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the 2019 Design Automation Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He was a Summer Faculty Fellow at the US Air Force Research Laboratory in 2020 and 2021. Prof. Norato serves as a Senior Advisor to the Journal of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, and as Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design.
Rosario Porras-Aguilar
Associate Professor of Physics and Optical Science
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Dr. Rosario Porras-Aguilar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Optical Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the Head of the Active and Reconfigurable Optics Laboratory. Dr. Porras’s research harnesses the optical properties of nanomaterials to obtain quantitative 3D information on transparent objects for biological and industrial applications.
In 2021, Dr. Porras-Aguilar was recognized with the NSF-CAREER Award. She was also named a Cottrell Scholar and a Scialog Fellow for the Advancing Bioimaging program, both recognitions given by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.
Committed to fostering environments of inclusion and diversity in STEM, Dr. Porras has organized numerous events to encourage and promote the participation of women in STEM areas in Mexico and the involvement of first-generation Latin@ students at UNC Charlotte. In addition, her leadership contributions include her service to professional societies, such as the International Society for Optics and Photonics.
Manuel Rausch
Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Rausch is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches aerospace engineering & biomedical engineering. His research focuses broadly on understanding soft tissue disease with specific interest in cardiovascular disease. In 2020, he won the NSF CAREER award that has enabled him and his students to study blood clot mechanics and to further their outreach efforts. His research and educational efforts are also currently supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Naval Research.