Five faculty members in the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University have been recognized by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) as TEES Fellows.
The TEES Fellow designation recognizes established faculty members with a history of continuous performance. TEES is an engineering research agency of the State of Texas and a member of The Texas A&M University System. Texas A&M engineering faculty hold joint appointments as TEES researchers.
Selected as TEES Fellows are Dr. Tahir Cagin, chemical engineering; Dr. Arum Han, electrical and computer engineering; Dr. Hisham Nasr-El-Din, petroleum engineering; Dr. Haiyan Wang, electrical and computer engineering; and Dr. Xinghang Zhang, mechanical engineering.
Dr. Tahir Cagin joined the Texas A&M faculty in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering in 2005. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Middle East Technical University and a Ph.D. from Clemson University. His research focuses on computational materials science and nanotechnology with emphasis on design, characterization and development of multifunctional nano-structured materials for device and sensor applications; fundamental studies on transport phenomena (heat, mass and momentum) at nanoscale and in confined media; thermal, mechanical, electronic and magnetic properties and phase behavior of materials; materials for thermal management, power generation and energy harvesting; and development and application of multiscale simulation methods. In 1999 he received the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (Theory) and has been the William Keeler Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M.
Dr. Arum Han is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the NanoBio Systems Lab. An expert in microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technologies, Han joined the faculty in August 2005. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Seoul National University in Korea in 1997 and his master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati in 2000. In August 2005, he received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Han’s research interests lie in the development of microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip systems for applications in cellular and molecular analysis. Particular focus areas are in developing high-throughput screening systems and portable detection systems for applications in developmental neurobiology, cancer metastasis, infectious diseases and microbe-mediated bioenergy solutions.
Dr. Hisham Nasr-El-Din is the John Edgar Holt Chair in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering. He joined the faculty in 2007 after more than 15 years with Saudi Aramco Oil Co. During his 35-year career, he has been a prolific researcher and developer of new technologies that have led to important advances in the drilling fluids field and petroleum engineering operations. Nasr-El-Din is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and has received numerous awards from SPE including Outstanding Associate Editor in 2008 and 2009, the SPE Productions and Operations Award in 2009, and the Outstanding Technical Editor in 2008. He has published 129 papers in peer-reviewed journals, presented at 267 conferences and meetings and currently hold two U.S. patents. Nasr-El-Din received a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Cairo, Egypt, and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.
Dr. Haiyan Wang is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She joined the Texas A&M faculty in January 2006 from Los Alamos National Laboratory as a director-funded post-doctoral fellow and a permanent staff member. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Nanchang University (China) and a master’s degree from the Institute of Metal Research (China), and earned her Ph.D. from North Carolina State University. Among her honors are the ASM Silver Medal Award 2011, National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award in 2009, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2008, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2008 and the Air Force Research Office’s Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) in 2007. Her research interests lie in the area of functional oxide and nitride thin films for microelectronics, optoelectronics, high-temperature superconductors, solid oxide fuel cells, solar cells and advanced nuclear reactors. Her expertise is thin-film growth and characterizations.
Dr. Xinghang Zhang is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, chair of the interdisciplinary Materials Science and Engineering graduate program at Texas A&M, and a TEES researcher in the Mechanical Engineering Division. Zhang joined the faculty in January 2005 and earned the prestigious NSF CAREER Award. He has supervised more than a dozen graduate students, among them 10 Ph.D. students. He has graduated four M.S. students who work for industry and three Ph.D.s who are all postdocs at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has written more than 100 journal articles that have received more than 1,200 citations. His H-index has exceeded 15. He has delivered numerous invited talks at national and international conferences, and has given graduate seminars in the U.S. and prestigious Chinese universities. His research group has the expertise on nanotwinned metals, radiation tolerant nanostructured metals for nuclear energy applications, and hydrogen storage materials for automobile applications.