Personnel

Dr. Vikram Kapila (Principal Investigator)

Prof., Mech. Eng., NYU Poly

Image description Dr. Vikram Kapila is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Polytechnic Institute, Brooklyn, NY, where he directs an NSF funded Web-Enabled Mechatronics and Process Control Remote Laboratory, an NSF funded Research Experience for Teachers Site in Mechatronics, and an NSF funded GK-12 Fellows project. He promotes NASA relevant projects to undergraduate and graduate students as an affiliate director of the New York Space Grant Consortium.

He has held visiting positions with the Air Force Research Laboratories in Dayton, OH. His research interests are in linear and nonlinear control, aerospace control applications, and mechatronics. He received Polytechnic's 2002 and 2008 Jacob's Excellence in Education Award and 2003 Distinguished Teacher Award. In 2004, he was selected for a three-year term as a Senior Faculty Fellow of Polytechnic's Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies. His scholarly activities have included one edited book, 4 chapters in edited books, 1 book review, 39 journal articles, and 88 conference papers. Moreover, he has mentored 67 high school students, 86 high school teachers, 21 undergraduate summer interns, and 11 undergraduate capstone-design teams, and graduated seven M.S. and four Ph.D. students.

Polytechnic Institute of New York University
6 Metrotech Center
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Telephone: (718) 260-3161
Fax: (718) 260-3532
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Prof. Nikhil Gupta (Senior Personnel)

Assoc. Prof., Mech. Eng., NYU Poly

Image description Prof. Nikhil Gupta is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Polytechnic Institute, Brooklyn, NY. His research focuses on processing and structure property correlation for particulate composites and sandwich structures; multifunctional micro-and nano-composite materials; sensing damage and structural health-monitoring techniques; and biomaterials and bio-inspired materials. He has presented 24 invited lectures and authored 3 book chapters, over 47 journals, and 75 conference publications and presentations.

Prof. Gupta is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2007 and 2009 Visiting Lectureship Award from the American Society for Metals-Indian Institute of Metals, the Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship administered by the American Society of Engineering Education, and the Junior Faculty Fellow, Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, Polytechnic Institute of NYU.
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Dr. Magued G. Iskander (Senior Personnel)

Prof., Civil Eng., NYU Poly

Image description Dr. Magued Iskander , Professor of Civil Engineering, is the PI of the WISE project and a Co-PI of the RAISE project; and co-directs Polytechnic's Stress Lab. He has mentored seven high school students, 20 K-12 teachers, nine undergraduate students, 25 M.S. students, and five Ph.D. students. He is a recipient of the Chi-Epsilon Metropolitan Section Excellence in Teaching Award, Polytechnic's 2002 Distinguished Teacher Award, 2006 Jacobs Excellence in Education Award for developing a course titled Instrumentation, Monitoring, and Condition Assessment of Civil Infrastructure, an NSF Career Grant, a Federal Highway Administration Grant, and several industrial and local grants. He has also attended several teaching workshops and has been a faculty advisor for six undergraduate executive scholars and the Polytechnic Student Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineering.
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Prof. Oded Nov (Senior Personnel)

Asst. Prof., Tech. Management., NYU Poly

Image description Dr. Nov, Assistant Professor of Technology Management, recipient of NSF CAREER Grant, specializes in social computing, citizen science, and online communities. He has mentored 1 PhD, 1 MS, and 7 BS students. Prof. Nov will coordinate entrepreneurship module and the Inno/Vention student idea competition. He will expose participants to the business context of mechatronics, robotics, and innovation, and to develop practical, business-oriented thinking about technology in general and mechatronics and robotics in particular.
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Prof. Maurizio Porfiri (Senior Personnel)

Assoc. Prof., Mech. Eng., NYU Poly

Image description Dr. Maurizio Porfiri , Associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, specializes in dynamical systems theory and mechanics of advanced materials with applications to underwater systems. Currently, he is conducting and supervising research in the areas of dynamical systems theory, mathematical control theory, mechanics of advanced materials, and underwater robotics.Porfiri received his Master of Science and PhD degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2000 and 2006, respectively. He also holds the Laurea degree in Electrical Engineering (with honors) from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" (2001) and a PhD (dual degree program) in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and the University of Toulon, Toulon, France (2005). He has coauthored over 50 journal articles, 40 conference papers and presentations, as well as numerous invited lectures. He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Honors Center of Italian Universities, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Society of Engineering Science, and the SPIE-International Society for Optical Engineering.
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Prof. Remi Dingreville (Former Research Mentor)

Asst. Prof., Mech. Eng., NYU Poly

Image description Dr. Remi Dingreville , Assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, previously served as a postdoctoral appointee at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He holds a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with honors from Université de Rennes. At Sandia, Dingreville’s research combined computational and experimental strategies for modeling fatigue of metals. While at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he served as a graduate research assistant, and he carried out methodologies to combine continuum mechanics and atomistic simulation for modeling structure-property relationships of nanostructured materials. A focus of Dingreville’s current research is what he likes to call “material by design.” Using a powerful computer cluster, he develops scalable methods for tailoring and understanding how materials’ lower length scales will affect their mechanical response and performance. Another research focus for Dingreville is combining continuum mechanics and atomistic simulations to model and design complex piezoresistive nanowires by quantifying their electromechanical response to surface effects.


Dr. Leo Gafney (Evaluator)

Independent Consultant

Image description Dr. Leo Gafney, an evaluation expert with prior experience in evaluating NSF-funded projects, is conducting external evaluation of the SMARTER project.

 

Dr. Sang-Hoon Lee

Industry Professor, NYU Poly

Image description Dr. Sang-Hoon Lee, Industry Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, also a former doctoral student of Prof. Kapila (graduated in fall 08), supported a number of pre project activities, including planning, recruitment, selection, and research assistant training. Dr. Lee has eight years of mechatronics and robotics experience through coursework and graduate research. Moreover, under Prof. Kapila’s supervision, Dr. Lee has served as the lead graduate assistant on a prior NSF-funded Research Experience for Teachers Site in Mechatronics. Dr. Lee is not funded under the current project.
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