May 10, 2023
The College of Engineering, Computing, and Applied Science announced new tenure and faculty promotions for AY 2024 on May 10, 2023. Among those to be promoted in August are Andrew Metcalf, Alexander Pullen, and David Ladner from the Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences department. Both Dr. Metcalf and Dr. Pullen will be promoted to Associate Professor with tenure while Dr. Ladner will be promoted to Professor. Kalyan Piratla from the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering will be promoted to Professor, as well as Kapil Chalil Madathil who has joint appointments in the industrial engineering and civil engineering departments.
Dr. Metcalf’s teaching and research interests are in the area of air pollution and air quality, with a particular focus on atmospheric aerosol particles. His lab, the Clemson Air Quality Lab, approaches air pollution measurements from many scales – from microscale measurements performed on a microscope in the laboratory to in situ measurements conducted during large-scale field projects. Current work is underway to bridge these measurement scales by developing methods to collect atmospheric aerosol particles in the field and bring them to microfluidic experiments in the lab while preserving the contents of the atmospheric samples.
Dr. Pullen’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of structural geology, sedimentology, and geochronology. He takes a field and laboratory-based approach to research by conducting geologic and geomorphic mapping, stratigraphic analysis, and applying U-Th-Pb geochronology. Dr. Pullen has research projects in Asia and North and South America. His research interests are broadly in the areas of continental tectonics, orogenic systems, and paleoclimate. Some of his current research projects focus on mountain building, aridification, eolian processes, and continental impacts on ocean chemistry and circulation.
Dr. Ladner’s research is geared toward making membrane-based water treatment processes more sustainable. This includes computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to redesign reverse osmosis (RO) membrane modules and decrease fouling problems, development of membrane coatings that can be quickly and cheaply regenerated, and process engineering for industrial wastewater treatment with ceramic membranes. Ladner is the lead investigator on a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation program Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) that is exploring new techniques for safely growing food using valuable nutrients reclaimed from wastewater.
Dr. Chalil Madathil’s area of expertise is in applying the knowledge base of human factors engineering to the design and operation of sustainable human-computer systems that involve rich interactions among people and technology. His research covers the entire spectrum of system design: from identifying the user needs to designing and developing computing systems that inform and motivate user behavior and empirically evaluating the efficacy of these interventions. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, his research attempts to understand how humans perceive, make sense of, and interact with human-machine systems. His work is funded by the United States National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Department of Defense, Department of Labor, National Institutes of Health and several other industry and state agencies.
Dr. Piratla’s research interests lie in the area of sustainable and resilient underground infrastructure systems with focus on design and installation aspects. He is also interested in understanding the inter-dependencies of various urban infrastructure systems to enhance their collective resilience against natural and anthropogenic hazards. Piratla’s research group studies resilience-based rehabilitation planning of water pipeline systems and real-time monitoring of water pipeline systems using sustainable sensing systems. Potential direct beneficiaries o Dr. Piratla’s research include water and power utilities, underground construction contractors, transportation agencies, emergency response teams, and other related government agencies.
Congratulations Andrew, Alex, David, Kalyan, and Kapil!
