faculty photos

Temple College of Engineering is pleased to announce new faculty additions for the fall 2018 semester.

Dr. Golriz Kermani is joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering as an Instructional faculty. She earned her PhD from Temple University, MSc and BSc, both from Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. Her research is focused on characterizing the rate dependency and inhomogeneity of aortic tissue and investigating their effects on the risk of traumatic aortic failure and/or injury. Dr. Kermani also served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Electric Vehicle Safety Laboratory at George Mason University. She works on characterization and modeling of lithium-ion batteries to improve their safety in electric vehicle applications.

Dr. Xiaonan Lu is joining the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Lu earned his BE and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and served as a guest PhD student at the Department of Energy Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark. Dr. Lu’s research interests include modeling, control and design of grid-interactive inverters; control and operation of AC and DC microgrids; control and operation of coupled transmission and distribution systems; modeling and design of secured energy delivery systems under cyber-secured infrastructures; controller and power real-time hardware-in-the-loop testing and various types of converter topologies.

Dr. Lu received Outstanding Reviewer Award for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics in 2013, Outstanding Reviewer Award for IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid in 2015, and Outstanding Postdoctoral Performance Award at Argonne National Laboratory in 2016.

Dr. Lu is Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and Editor of IEEE Power Engineering Letters. Dr. Lu is a member of IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS), Industrial Electronics Society (IES), Industry Applications Society (IAS), and Power and Energy Society (PES). Dr. Lu is also serving as the Secretary of Industrial Power Converters Committee (IPCC) in IEEE IAS.

Until recently, he was with Argonne National Laboratory, first as a Postdoc Appointee and then as an Energy Systems Scientist.

Dr. Elham Sahraei is joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering as an Assistant Professor. She earned her PhD degree from George Washington University, and completed two years of post-doctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Sahraei also earned her MS in Biomechanics from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran and BS in Mechanical Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology in Isfahan, Iran.

Dr. Sahraei has been a Research Scientist at the Impact and Crashworthiness Lab of MIT since 2014. Dr. Sahraei is the co-director of the MIT Battery Consortium, a multi-sponsor industrial program supported by major automotive and battery manufacturers such as Daimler, Jaguar Land-Rover, LG Chem, and Boston Power. She has also been a co-investigator of multiple Ford-MIT Alliance projects, and a DOE project with National Renewable Energy Lab on safety of Li-Ion batteries. Dr. Sahraei’s current research is focused on characterization and computational modeling of advanced energy storage systems (Li-Ion batteries) for electric vehicles. Besides characterization and modeling of Li-Ion batteries, her expertise includes full-scale vehicle crash analysis, occupant protection, and analysis of roadside safety structures.

Dr. Damoon Soudbakhsh joins as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Soudbakhsh earned his PhD from George Washington University in Transportation Safety; engaged in postdoctoral study in Active Adaptive Control Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and earned both his MSc and BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran.

Dr. Soudbakhsh was a member of Active Adaptive Controls Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for four years. As a research scientist at MIT, he introduced algorithms for co-design of Cyber-Physical Systems with examples in variety of applications from automotive to power systems. In addition, Dr. Soudbakhsh developed adaptive algorithms for fault detection and health monitoring of jet engine components.

Dr. Soudbakhsh is a recipient of Khawrazmi Young Award and Dwight Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Award. He is an author of Handbook of Intelligent Vehicles and Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences and was the Program Chair of ASME-Boston section from 2015 to 2017.

Dr. Laura Solomon is joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering as a teaching faculty. She earned her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University after earning a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Temple College of Engineering. Prior to joining Temple, Dr. Solomon worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at West Virginia University. Her research interests include phase change materials, energy storage and CFD. 

Dr. Rouzbeh Tehrani has been elevated to tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, where he previously served as an instructional faculty. He received his PhD in Environmental Engineering from Temple College of Engineering, following an MS in Civil Engineering from Dalhousie University in Canada and BS in Chemical Engineering (oil and gas process design), from Azad University of Tehran, Iran. His research interests are remediation of contaminated soil and sediments; fate of chlorinated organic contaminants and their metabolites in natural systems; data science and treatment technologies of produced water and hydrofracturing wastewater.

Dr. Karin Wang is joining the Department of Bioengineering as an Assistant Professor. She received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University in 2015. She comes to Temple Engineering after serving as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program of Molecular and Integrative Physiological Sciences of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard University since 2015. Her main research interest is in cell and matrix mechanobiology. Specifically, she is integrating principles from engineering, biomaterials science, physics, and cell biology to develop breast cancer model systems that recapitulate and probe the connection between structure, mechanics, and function.