Hamilton’s research focuses on water use by modern buildings. Specifically, he is looking at water and energy consumption in buildings and strategies to achieve a sustainable future of water use. He is from El Dorado, Kansas, and his hobbies include Phishing (the band), golfing and attending sporting events. His favorite food is pizza and his bucket list item includes a full summer Phish tour.

Sen is working on crop modeling, known as the DSSAT model with global circulation models. Throughout her research, she is working to discover the future hotspots for growing major crops in the eastern Kansas River Basin. The goal of her research is to boost future crop production systems. Sen is from Bangladesh, and she enjoys cooking and traveling. Her favorite food is chicken biryani and her bucket list item is to travel the world.

Jo’s research is focused on engineered protein self-assembly to develop functional biomaterials for biosensing and therapy. An example is the self-assembly of protein coatings with a genetically modified calcium indicator, which shows fluorescence change upon binding to calcium ions. Her group has developed a simple and inexpensive coating fabrication platform that senses calcium ions to detect hypercalcemia-associated cancer. Jo is from Jeonju, South Korea, and she enjoys playing the piano and reading. Her favorite food is pasta and she wants to travel to every continent someday.

The main focus of Salahat’s research is to evaluate the load demands on bridge piers subjected to vehicular collision events in the presence of sub-standard intervening safety devices, such as concrete barriers. The outcomes of this research will suggest lower load demands on bridge piers compared to those specified by the AASHTO when the sub-standard devices are neglected. This will help structural engineers in the highway community to design or strengthen bridge piers that are structurally adequate and economically feasible. Salahat is from Palestine and he enjoys coding, and watching sports and movies. His favorite food is spicy grilled steak and he wants to establish his own company someday.

Dalal’s research on artificial intelligence focuses on explaining the hidden neuron activation pattern of a deep neural network by identifying concepts represented by certain neurons and connecting these concepts with background knowledge to achieve human understandable explanations of the decision given by the network. She is from Delhi, India, and enjoys reading, watching Hindi movies, painting and sketching, and cooking. Her favorite food is Indian snacks, including momos and noodles, and her bucket list items are to visit Leh Ladakh on a bullet bike and to go skydiving.

Dahale’s research focuses on reconciling multi time-scale measurements using statistical machine learning approaches in state estimation, which is essential in enhancing the situational awareness of power distribution systems. Her work also focuses on developing optimization formulations for robust and efficient state estimation approaches for highly unobservable distribution grids. Dahale is from Nashik, India, and she enjoys painting and play badminton. Her favorite food is pav bhaji and she wants to see the Egyptian pyramids someday.

Farooq’s research centers on supply chain coordination in public health disaster preparedness and response systems using multi-objective cooperative game theory. She aims to identify mechanisms that allow different organizations to achieve an outcome that benefits the entire system while maintaining each organization’s decision-making autonomy. Farooq is from Pakistan and enjoys reading, baking and traveling. Her favorite foods are chicken pot pie and decadent chocolate cake, and her bucket list item is to raise her baby to be a compassionate person.

Amare’s research involves understanding the mechanisms that contribute to the thermoregulation of human bodies from an engineering perspective and simulating them. He is developing tools that can be used to simulate thermoregulatory phenomena like shivering, sweating and vasomotion on a voxel human phantom. Such a simulation tool can be further used to simulate the effect of clothing on human thermal comfort, design individualized space suits and the effect of radiation dosimetry on thermoregulation. Such a powerful tool can help to prepare for extreme weather, sports, space explorations and medical treatments. Amare comes to K-State from Mumbai, India, and enjoys reading, hiking, fencing and Taekwondo. His favorite food is ice cream on a warm baked cookie and he wants to compete for a Nobel Prize someday.