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Five New Faculty Members Join MABE

The department is happy to announce five new faculty members are joining the department this fall.

Ragini Acharya joined the department this fall as an associate professor of aerospace engineering and is located at the UT Space Institute in Tullahoma. Acharya was previously a hypersonic propulsion lead senior principal engineer at Raytheon Missiles and Defense, USA. Her research interests include hypersonic and advanced propulsion, hypersonic signatures, and uncertainty quantification.

head shot of Bryan GoodBryan Good joined the department this fall as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering. Good was previously an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State University and the Hershey Neuroscience Institute. His research interests include cardiovascular biomechanics, biorheology, computational fluid dynamics and fluid-structure interaction modeling, biocompatibility, acute ischemic stroke, congenital heart disease, and thrombosis.

head shot of Mark GragstonMark Gragston joined the department this fall as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and is located at the UT Space Institute in Tullahoma. Gragston previously worked as a research professor for the HORIZON Center at the Space Institute. He received his PhD from MABE in 2018. His research interests include development and application of laser and optical based techniques for studying high-speed aerothermodynamics and measurements of combustion phenomena and plasma dynamics. He is also developing high-enthalpy testing capabilities to better understand aerodynamic heating and real gas effects in hypersonic flows.

Bradley Jared joined the department this fall as an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Jared was previously a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories where he led advanced manufacturing research and development in the Material, Physical, and Chemical Sciences Center. He has over 25 years of experience in mechanical design and advanced manufacturing process development. His research interests include additive manufacturing, precision engineering, design of precision electro-mechanical systems and mechanisms, and machine learning for manufacturing processes

headshot of Wei WangWei Wang joined the department this fall as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.  Wang was previously a postdoctoral research scholar at North Carolina State. His research interests include developing novel functional surfaces to address some of the key challenges in the areas of membrane separation, droplet manipulation, icephobicity, hemocompatibility and microfluidics. Particular areas of interest include liquid-repellent surfaces, omniphobic membranes, patterned surfaces, stimuli-responsive surfaces, and anti/de-icing coatings.