Benoit Van Aken, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.  He received the Master in economics and the PhD in biochemical engineering from the Catholic University of Louvain.  Prior to joining Temple, Dr. Aken served as an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at West Virginia University.  He has published more than 25 articles with a particular focus on molecular biology and bioinformatics and is described as “an expert of the various databases available on the internet” and “in using molecular biology and bioinformatics tools for environmental sciences.”  

 
Srikanth Bontha, Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering (Teaching/Instructional), Department of Mechanical Engineering.  He graduated with the PhD in engineering from Wright State University.  His industrial experience includes assignments with Global Milling Systems and Advanced Materials Machining-Breakthrough Technologies.  Dr. Bontha has published three articles and has an additional three articles in preparation.  He has also published a number of papers in conference proceedings and has made more than a dozen conference presentations.  Dr. Bontha was selected as a 2009 American Society for Metals (ASM)/Indian Institute of Metals (IIM) Visiting Lecturer and is a recipient of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) Young Leader Professional Development Award.   

 
Svetlana Neretina, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Dr. Neretina received the PhD from McMaster University in engineering physics.  Prior to joining the Temple faculty, she served as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at The Georgia Institute of Technology.  Her research focuses on the fabrication of thin films and nanostructured materials for solar cell applications.

 
Joseph Picone, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Dr. Picone received his BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.  Prior to joining the Temple faculty, he served as a professor in the department of electrical engineering at Mississippi State University.  Heß has previously worked as a speech researcher at Texas Instruments and AT&T Bell Laboratories, and maintains a close working relationship with the Department of Defense.  Dr. Picone’s research focuses on human language technology, particularly statistical modeling of the acoustic speech signal.  

 
Nancy Pleshko, Professor in Mechanical Engineering (Research), Department of Mechanical Engineering.  Dr. Pleshko received the PhD in biophysical chemistry from Rutgers University in Newark, followed by two years of an NIH training fellowship in biomechanics at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), an affiliate of Weill Cornell Medical School in Manhattan.  Prior to joining the Temple faculty, she served as director of the musculoskeletal and imaging spectroscopy lab at HSS.   Her research focuses on assessment of tissues at the molecular, cellular, and structural level through application of state-of-the-art vibrational spectroscopy, including mid- and near-infrared spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging, in concert with complementary techniques.  

 
Sandip Shah, Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Teaching/Instructional), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.  Dr. Shah is a native of Philadelphia and holds a PhD in chemical and environmental engineering from the University of California at Riverside.  His area of expertise is renewable energy and air treatment.  He has worked for the Ford Motor Company in their emission testing laboratories, and has 15 refereed publications in prestigious journals such as Environmental Science and Technology.

 
Bin Wang, Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering (Teaching/Researching), Department of Mechanical Engineering.  Dr. Wang received the PhD degree in Engineering at Temple University.  He completed his postdoctoral training in the vascular biology at the Medical College of Georgia.  His research interests include application of nanotechnologies for uses of medical diagnostics and treatments in tumor and myocardial infarction murine models; design and development of biofluidic devices for in vitro studies, growth factor therapy for myocardial infarction, the role of shear stress and cytokines on vascular endothelial cell adhesion, radiation and tumor biology, and microcirculatory blood flow.