Maryam Raeeszadeh-Sarmazdeh joined the University of Nevada, Reno in July 2019 as an assistant professor. Her research group is focused on biomolecular engineering and synthetic biology to develop novel biotechnology tools and products to solve major issues in human health, sustainability and environment. Dr. Sarmazdeh was a senior research fellow in the Department of Cancer Biology at Mayo Clinic, Florida, during which her work was focused on engineering novel protein-based therapeutics based on natural enzyme inhibitors. Prior to her appointment at Mayo Clinic, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at the University of Delaware where her research was focused on enzyme and metabolic pathway engineering. Dr. Sarmazdeh earned her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. There, her research was focused on generating site-specific protein immobilization on the surface and protein engineering using yeast surface display and directed evolution.
M. Rashed Khan
Khan Lab@UNR aims to study, design, and develop soft materials, unconventional processes, and reconfigurable micro/nanodevices that can be harnessed and optimized further for advanced biochemical, biomedical, and physicochemical applications. The lab is also keen to establish a multidisciplinary smart-manufacturing research group, including researchers from various backgrounds. Through short and long-term active collaboration, Khan Lab@UNR would like to address fundamental challenges associated with soft micro-device fabrication, 3D/4D (bio)printing, and patterning, advanced hybrid sensor manufacturing, biomedical device development – which are still unnoticed and under-explored, and need further investigation.
Additionally, our group also focuses on computational neuroscience and neurobioengineering. Under this research direction, we study human brain, brain functions, brain structure so that the established knowledge can be broadly applicable to general biomecical science and knowledge of the brain and brain-diseases.
Chad Curtis
Dr. Curtis’s research interests lie at the interface of engineering, data science and medicine. He investigates the transport properties of nanoparticle platforms for improved drug delivery. He uses machine learning models combined trained on nanoparticle trajectory datasets to characterize the nanoparticle-tissue microenvironment interface. As a data scientist, Dr. Curtis is also involved in many multidisciplinary projects across campus including thermal modeling of Lake Mead, genome sequencing and bioinformatics, open education resources evaluation, and support for wellness and retention of undergraduate researchers.
Erick Bandala
Erick R. Bandala, Assistant Research Professor for Advanced Water Technologies at the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas, NV. Dr. Bandala holds PhD degree in Engineering, a Master degree in Organic Chemistry and a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. Before his current position, he was faculty member of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Universidad de Las Americas Puebla (2007-2013) and the Department of Chemical, Food and Environmental Engineering (2013 to 2015) and titular researcher (1993-2007) at the Mexican Institute of Water Technology (belonging to the Ministry of Environment Mexico) in Morelos, Mexico. Dr. Bandala has taught graduate and undergraduate courses covering fundamentals and applications of environmental sciences and engineering with particular emphasis in water treatment processes for disinfection and decontamination, soil treatment and its application for site restoration. Dr. Bandala has been the recipient of several prestigious awards, Visiting Professor at the Department of Technology and Environmental Design at Appalachian State University (2014), the UDLAP Outstanding Teaching Award 2013, the Puebla State 2012 Science and Technology Award, Professional Hydrologist (Water Quality) by the American Institute of Hydrology, the Rice International Visiting Fellow on Energy, the Environment and Sustainability 2008-2009, National Researcher (Level II) on the National Council of Science and Technology-Mexico (2004-present), visiting Professor at the School of Civil and Agricultural Engineering. Universidad de Concepción, Chile 2004 and 2008 and Invited Researcher at the Plataforma Solar de Almería, Spain (2000). He has research interests in several different topics related with Environmental Engineering including A) Mechanistic aspects of the use and application of solar driven advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) for environmental restoration B) Development of advanced water and soil treatment for site restoration C) Synthesis, characterization and application of nanomaterials for Indoor Farming systems D) Development of Climate Change adaptation methodologies for water security. As result of his research activities, Dr. Bandala is author or co-author of over 100 international publication including 68 peer-reviewed papers in international journals with high impact index (average impact factor 2.7, >1490 citations, h-index 22); 5 books, 25 book chapters and 65 works published in proceedings of international conferences.
Dev Chidambaram
MER Lab focuses on the design, engineering, research, development and characterization of materials for electrochemical applications in sustainable energy generation and environmental protection. Our focus is on understanding electron transfer processes using spectroscopic techniques (including synchrotron-based techniques), and applying that knowledge to solve interdisciplinary materials and engineering problems. Electrochemistry and spectroscopy can be used to obtain complementary information; electrochemistry assesses the nature and kinetics of an electron transfer reaction and spectroscopy, often used simultaneously with electrochemistry in our research, provides chemical and molecular information of the same reaction. Our research is primarily in the area of materials for energy.
Sage Hiibel
Dr. Hiibel received his B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2003 and 2004, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Colorado State University in 2008. After a short post doc at Texas A&M in 2008-2009, he returned to UNR and was a post doc in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department from 2009 – 2012 before joining the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department as a Research Assistant Professor. Funding for his research has come from the EPA, DOD, DOE, and NSF. Dr. Hiibel’s research interests include renewable and sustainable energy systems, membrane separations in environmental applications, and novel membrane bioreactor systems.
Charles Coronella
Waste to energy conversion, biomass pre-treatment for bioenergy, applications of fluidization and chemical looping combustion.
Vaidyanathan (Ravi) Subramanian
Ravi Subramanian is currently an associate professor of chemical engineering. He is on the graduate faculty of the Electrical and Biomedical Engineering Department and an adjunct in the Chemistry Department. He is also the solar energy thrust area coordinator in the Renewable Energy Center at the University. His area of research focus is on nanostructured materials for solar energy utilization. He has expertise in the synthesis, characterization and application of photoactive materials in photovoltaics, clean fuel production and environmental remediation. In his 12 years of research he has developed inorganic materials including semiconductor-semiconductor and semiconductor-metal nanocomposites for applications related to solar energy utilization and fuel cells.
Materials discovery and devices development to harvest solar energy continues to be a challenge. Eco-friendly and earth abundant elements have a great potential to harvest solar energy. With solar energy: your future is bright!