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MEEd 2024 > About > Organizing Committee

Organizing Committee

Michele Miller

MICHELE MILLER, Ph.D.
Campbell University

Michele Miller is Professor and Associate Dean of Engineering at Campbell University. She is the current Chair of ASME’s Committee on Engineering Education. Prior to joining Campbell in 2017, she was a mechanical engineering professor at Michigan Tech for 22 years. She has been an advocate for project-based curricula and has served ABET as a program evaluator and team chair. She teaches classes on manufacturing and mechanics. She has performed research in engineering education, micro-electromechanical systems, and precision machining. She received a BS degree from Duke University and MS and PhD degrees from North Carolina State University, all in mechanical engineering.

 

Rungun Nathan

RUNGUN NATHAN, Ph.D.
Penn State Berks

Rungun Nathan, a professor and program chair for the mechanical engineering department, joined the faculty at Penn State Berks in 2007 as an assistant professor and was promoted in 2012 to associate professor. He has over 25 combined years of increasing responsibilities in industry and in academia, including at the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), a telecommunications technology arm of the Indian government, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), Bangalore, and Villanova University, PA.

Nathan received his BS from the University of Mysore, a postgraduate diploma from the Indian Institute of Science, an MS from Louisiana State University, and a PhD from Drexel University. He worked in electronic packaging in C-DOT and then as a scientific assistant in the robotics laboratory at IISc. in Bangalore, India, and as a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania in haptics and virtual reality. His research interests are in the areas of brain traumatic injury, unmanned vehicles, particularly flapping flight and Frisbees, mechatronics, robotics, MEMS, virtual reality, and haptics, as well as teaching with technology. He has ongoing research in brain traumatic injury, flapping flight, frisbee flight dynamics, lift in porous material, and wound therapy. He is an active member of APS (DFD), ASEE, ASME, and AGMA, and is a reviewer for several ASME, IEEE, ASEE, and FIE conferences and journals. He is co-editor for ASEE publication Computers in Education.

Nathan has been a very active member of both the Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering Divisions of ASEE since 2006. He started as a member at large and then rose to chair the Mechanics Division in 2012–2013. He currently is chair of the Mechanical Engineering Division after starting as member at large in 2017. Nathan also has been an active member of ASEE's Engineering Technology, Computers in Education, Educational Research Methods, Multidisciplinary Engineering, Experimentation and Laboratory-Oriented Studies, and Systems Engineering Divisions. He is currently nominated as a Program Evaluator for ABET. He has also served as one of the organizers for MEED since 2021.

 

Nader Jalili

NADER JALILI, Ph.D.
The University of Alabama

Nader Jalili joined Southern Methodist University (SMU) as its next dean of Lyle School of Engineering on March 2023. He was formerly professor and head of mechanical engineering department at the University of Alabama (UA) since 2018. Prior to his department headship at UA, Dr. Jalili was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Department Chair for Graduate Studies and Research, and Director of Northeastern University Piezoactive Systems Laboratory at Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts). An ASME Fellow, Dr. Jalili is the current Chair (2022‐2023), past Vice‐Chair (2021‐2022) and past Secretary (2020‐2021) of ASME Mechanical Engineering Department Heads and Chairs (MEDHC); current Chair (2019‐present) and past Vice‐Chair (2018‐2019) of ASME Southeast Mechanical Engineering Department Heads (SMEDH). He is currently the Dynamics and Control Systems Subject Editor of International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems and Associate Technical Editor of Journal of Vibration and Control. He was the Founding Chair of ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division Technical Committee on Vibration and Control of Smart Structures. He was also the past Associate Editors of ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics (2014‐2017), ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control (2006‐2012) as well as a past Technical Editor of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics from 2005 to 2009.

Jalili is an innovative leader and researcher, known for bringing the resources of engineering education and research to undergraduate and graduate students, industry partners and community outreach programs.

Dr. Jalili has been PI or Co-PI on more than $17 million in external funding, including grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Defense in the domain of vibration, control and robotic-based manufacturing (He is the author/co‐author of more than 350 peer‐refereed technical publications; including 135 journal papers, 2 textbooks and 5 book chapters. He was the former Director of Alabama IMaDE®, and led new paradigms in education and workforce development centered around a novel educational facility that enables hands-on project-based learning in robotic manufacturing and a workforce accelerator program that aimed to bring the teaching modalities of colleges, workforce training, and companies into a singular ecosystem to allow both degree path and non-degree path students/workers to engage in competency-based educations catered to those seeking careers in industry.

 

Orlando M. Ayala

ORLANDO M. AYALA, Ph.D.
Old Dominion University

Dr. Ayala received his BS in Mechanical Engineering with honors (Cum Laude) from Universidad de Oriente (Venezuela) in 1995, MS in 2001 and PhD in 2005, both from University of Delaware (USA). Dr. Ayala is currently serving as Associate Professor in the Engineering Technology Department at Old Dominion University. Prior to joining ODU in 2013, Dr. Ayala spent 3 years as a Postdoc at the University of Delaware where he expanded his knowledge on simulation of multiphase flows while acquiring skills in high-performance parallel computing and scientific computation. Before that, Dr. Ayala held a faculty position at Universidad de Oriente where he taught and developed courses for a number of subjects such as Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, Thermodynamics, Multiphase Flows, Hydraulic Machinery, as well as different Laboratory courses. Additionally, Dr. Ayala has had the opportunity to work for a number of engineering consulting companies, which have given him an important perspective and exposure to the industry. He has been directly involved in at least 20 different engineering projects related to a wide range of industries. Dr. Ayala has provided service to professional organizations such as ASME, since 2008 he has been a member of the Committee of Spanish Translation of ASME Codes. Dr. Ayala has published over one hundred journal and peer-reviewed conference papers. His work has been presented in several international forums in Austria, the USA, Venezuela, Japan, France, Mexico, and Argentina. Dr. Ayala has an average citation per year of all his published work of 42.80.

 

Karim H. Muci-Kuchler

KARIM H. MUCI-KUCHLER, Ph.D.
Texas State University

Dr. Karim Muci-Kuchler is a Professor and Mechanical Engineering Academic Program Coordinator at the Ingram School of Engineering of Texas State University. Before joining Texas State University, he was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Experimental and Computational Mechanics Laboratory at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University in 1992. He has taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate engineering courses and his main interest areas include Engineering Education, Computational Mechanics, Product Design and Development, and Solid Mechanics. Dr. Muci-Kuchler is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, co-author of a book about Adaptive Meshing with Boundary Elements, and author or co-author of over 85 publications. The later include papers related to engineering education, the boundary element method, the friction stir spot welding process, and surrogate perforating projectile wounds, among others. He has served as session chair or co-chair at international conferences, has reviewed papers for technical journals and conference proceedings, has served as panelist for the National Science Foundation (NSF), and has done consulting for industry in Mexico and the US.