Frederick Harris, Jr

High Performance Computation and Visualization Lab Founded in 1996, the High Performance Computation and Visualization Laboratory performs research in the areas of bioinformatics, parallel computing, graphics, and the use of virtual reality to solve real-world problems. Our researchers consists primarily of graduate students and alumni of the University of Nevada, Reno who are actively developing improved ways to interface with and use existing virtual reality hardware and refining virtual reality application development. Brain Computation Lab Founded in 2001, the brain lab is a joint research center between the departments of Computer Science & Engineering, Medicine, Physiology & Cell Biology, and the program of Biomedical Engineering. It also has neurobiological collaborations with the Brain Mind Institute at the EPFL (Switzerland), the University of Cergy Pontoise (France), and the University of Bonn (Germany).

Our researchers consists primarily of undergraduate/graduate students and alumni of the University of Nevada, Reno. They are actively developing computational innovations to understand the physiological processes that give rise to neocortical memory, learning, and cognition. Our models and experiments help understand brain pathophysiology and create brain-like artificial intelligence and neural prosthetic devices.

Hanif Livani

Hanif Livani is Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno with affiliation in the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering specializing in power system engineering. He received the BS and the MS degree in electrical engineering, both from the University of Mazandaran, Iran and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic and State university (Virginia Tech). He joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno in Fall 2014.

Thomas Harris

Dr. Thomas Harris is a Foundation Professor in the Department of Economics in the College of Business, has a research appointment in Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station in the College Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Natural Resources; State Extension Specialists in Community and Economic Development in the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension; and the Director of the University Center for Economic Development at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Harris has been at UNR since 1981 and his primary areas of teaching, research and extension are rural economic development, economic impact modeling, and local government finance. Dr. Harris’ research covers the economic and fiscal impacts of changes in public land grazing policies and surface water reallocations. Tom was co-editor of a published book titled Targeted Regional Economic Development, and, recently, worked on the Stronger Economies Together Project covering the Western Nevada Development District. Also Dr. Harris is a Fellow with the Western Rural Development Center.

Henry Sun

Henry Sun is an Assistant Research Professor Microbiology, Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences at the Desert Research Institute, Las Vegas campus. His research areas of interest and expertise is life in extreme environments; endolithic microorganisms in the Antarctic dry valleys, the Atacama Desert, and Death Valley; mineral formations in microbial environments; biological rock weathering, iron isotopic fractionation, and survival and adaptation in endolithic communities; new approaches to planetary life detection; and microbiology of compost tea making and its use as an alternative to fungicide in agriculture and viticulture.

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.

M Sami Fadali

M. Sami Fadali earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University in 1974, an MS from the Control Systems Center, UMIST, England, in 1977 and a Ph. D. from the University of Wyoming in 1980. He was an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of King Abdul Aziz in Jeddah , Saudi Arabia 1981-1983. From 1983-85, he was a Post Doctoral Fellow at Colorado State University. In 1985, he joined the Electrical Engineering Dept. at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is currently Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1994 he was a visiting professor at Oakland University and GM Research and Development Labs. He spent the summer of 2000 as a Senior Engineer at TRW, San Bernardino. His research interests are in the areas of fuzzy logic stability and control, state estimation and fault detection, and applications to power systems, renewable energy, and physiological systems.

Mehdi Etezadi-Amoli

Mehdi Etezadi-Amoli is a professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Etezadi worked as an assistant professor of Electrical Engineering at New Mexico State and the University of New Mexico during 1975-1979. From 1979-1983 he worked as a Senior Protection Engineer at Arizona Public Service Company in Phoenix, Arizona. He worked at NV Energy (formerly Sierra Pacific Power Company) during summers 1985-1998. In 1983 he joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Nevada, Reno where he is responsible for the power system program. Dr. Etezadi served as the chairman of the Electrical and Biomedical Engineering Department during 2010-2015.

He is the author/coauthor of more than 100 technical papers dealing with power systems planning, distribution, protection, transient analysis, and renewable energy.