Dr. Abel-Santos is interested in research that combines the areas of organic chemistry, biochemistry and microbiology. The Abel-Santos laboratory is currently applying enzymology approaches to the process of Bacillus spore germination. Due to its potential as a bioterrorism weapon, new methods to control B. anthracis (a.k.a ANTHRAX) infections are needed. B. anthracis spores are resistant to most type of antiseptic and antibiotic treatments. Although anthrax spores are resilient, they have to “taste” their environment to determine when conditions are right to germinate (e.g. your lungs) Using the information gathered from the kinetic models, we have developed nucleoside inhibitors against anthrax spore germination. These compounds have proven to be effective in protecting macrophage form anthrax-mediated killing.
Zoe Harrold
Dr. Zoe Harrold has a Ph.D. in Geomicrobiology with 10 years of experience working in a laboratory setting, designing and executing experiments that quantify the thermodynamics of geochemical and biogeochemical processes occurring in microbe-water-rock systems, including microbe-metal surface adsorption and biogeochemical sulfur, iron and nitrogen cycling. She is passionate about teaching science and strive to create collaborative work environments where students can thrive.
Her research interests include:
Geomicrobiology, low-temperature aqueous geochemistry, microbially mediated mineral dissolution, biogeochemical cycling, heavy metal adsorption and speciation, and metabolic efficiency
Ashkan Salamat
Ai-Sun (Kelly) Tseng
Dr. Ai-Sun (Kelly) Tseng is an Assistant Professor in the School of Life Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The regulation of animal size and shape is a longstanding and fundamental question in Biology. Although animals such as planaria and salamanders can fully regenerate their body parts after injury, humans lack this amazing ability. The Tseng lab is especially interested in studying how an animal senses physiologically that it has injured or lost body organs and how it responds to repair the damage.
Lynn Fenstermaker
Dr. Lynn Fenstermaker is an Emeritus faculty, and has experience and interests in the use of remotely sensed data to map, monitor, and assess the effect of environmental stressors on vegetation at small and large scales. She has served as Director of two NSHE climate change experiments; the Nevada Desert FACE (Free Air CO2 Enrichment) Facility and the Mojave Global Change Facility and is currently Director of the NV Climate-ecohydrological Assessment Network (NevCAN). All three of these projects have been examining various aspects of climate change impacts on the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts. Some of her recent research on evapotranspiration has scaled leaf and canopy measurements to plant community and ecosytem levels using remotely sensed data from ground, UAV and satellite sources. Dr. Fenstermaker is the DRI liaison for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and has worked with the University of Nevada Las Vegas to develop a Class I UAS platform. This platform has been used for several years to acquire multispectral and color images of research plots to assess climate change treatment effects and basic plant cover information.
Mei Yang
Dr. Mei Yang received her Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas in Aug. 2003. She was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Columbus State University (CSU), GA before she joined UNLV as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in Aug. 2004. At UNLV, she was tenured and promoted to associate professor in Jul. 2010. Her research interests include computer architectures, embedded systems, and networking. In these areas, she has published over 98 journal and conference papers with the total citation over 195. At UNLV, she has received seven research grants, from NSF, UNLV FOA/SPGRA/ARI/NIA, all as PI, with total fund over $1M. Together with other faculty, she has received three teaching grants, from NSF, NASA and Microsoft Research, with total fund over $240K. Dr. Yang also holds two US patents in router design. She has supervised two ongoing Ph. D. students, four graduated master students and three graduated visiting Ph. D. students in their thesis and dissertation work.
Yoohwan Kim
Prof. Kim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). He received his Ph.D. degree from Case Western Reserve University in 2003 in the area of network security (DDoS attack mitigation). His research expertise includes secure network design, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) communications, and cyber-physical system (CPS) security. He has published over 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences, and 6 patents granted or pending. His research has been sponsored by Microsoft Research, US Air Force, Naval Air Warfare Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, National Security Technologies, and National Science Foundation. His research on DDoS attacks has established a foundation for Rate-Based Intrusion Prevention Systems, which has been cited over 300 times collectively.
Ju-Yeon Jo
Unmanned Aerial Systems Expertise:
Cybersecurity in UAS control software and ground systems
UAS communication network security
UAS privacy protection schemes
Software engineering in UAS system development
Yingtao Jiang
Dr. Jiang is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research interests are algorithms, VLSI architectures, and circuit level techniques for the design of DSP, networking, telecommunications, and biomedical systems; computer architectures; biomedical signal processing, instrumentation, and medical informatics; BioMEMS/BioNEMS; wireless communications and security; nuclear sensors and real time, portable analytical instrument development; and renewable energy.
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.