New School of Engineering Faculty
Dra. Alesandra C. Morales Velez
Department of Civil Engineering and Survey
Dra. Morales-Velez obtained a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering (2014) from the University of Rhode Island and a Master of Science (2010) and Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (2007) from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM). She joined the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez this past March (2015) as the new faculty member of the Geotechnical Engineering Group at the Department of Civil Engineering and Survey. Her main research interests are liquefaction of unique soils such as calcareous sands and non-plastic dilatant silts, short-and-long-term durability properties of crushed limestone aggregate and linking laboratory and field behavior of soils using shear wave velocity. She received the Dwight David Eisenhower Fellowship as an undergraduate (2006) and the Department of Energy Fellowship as a graduate student (2008). In recognition of her commitment to transportation research and academic accomplishments, the University of Rhode Island Transportation Center (URITC) selected her as its 2013 Outstanding Student of the Year. Dra. Morales-Velez was selected by the prestigious Pile Driving Contractors Association to participate in their PDCA 8th Biennial Professors’ Driven Pile Institute celebrated this summer at the Utah State University. Dra. Morales-Vélez was also invited to present his PhD research the 3rd Flat Dilatometer Conference celebrated also this past summer in Rome, Italy. She was selected as a member of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (http://www.geerassociation.org/Organization.html). Her most recent article will be published at the 6th International Conference on Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering which will be celebrated this upcoming fall in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Dr. Daniel Rodriguez Roman
Department of Civil Engineering and Survey
Dr. Rodriguez Roman obtained a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering (2015) from the University of California, Irvine; a Master of Science from University of California, Berkeley (2010) and and Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM)(2009). He joined the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez as a new faculty member of the Department of Civil Engineering and Survey. His main research interests are Travel demand management, network design problems, evolutionary algorithms, surrogate-based optimization. Some of his publications are Ranaiefar, F, Chow JYJ, Roman Rodriguez D, Camargo PV, and SG Ritchie. 2013. Geographic supply chain scalability and elasticity of a commodity generation structural model using public data. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2378, pp. 73-83; Román Rodríguez D, Masoud N, Kyungsoo J, and SG Ritchie. 2014. Goal-programming approach to allocate Freight Analysis Framework data flow mode. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2411, pp. 82-89.
Conference Proceedings
Masoud N, Ranaiefar F, McNally M, Rodriguez Roman D, and SG Ritchie. 2014. An alternative method to estimate balancing factors for the disaggregation of OD matrices. 93rd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC
Román Rodríguez D and SG Ritchie. 2015. Accounting for population exposure to pollutants in the toll design problem. 94th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC
Dra. Sheilla N. Torres-Nieves
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dra. Torres obtained a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (2011) and a Master of Science (2007) from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and aBachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (2007) from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM). Before joining the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez as a new faculty member for the Department of Mechanical Engineering she worked as a Senior Engineer for Compression Systems Aerodynamics in Pratt and Whitney. Her main research interests are Fluid dynamics; Turbulence; Boundary Layers; External Conditions Effects; Applications: Aerospace, Turbomachinery Flows, Environmental and Atmospheric, Oceanography. Some of her publications include : Brzek, B., Torres-Nieves, S.N., Lebrón-Bosques, J.R., Cal, R.B., Meneveau, C., and Castillo, L., “Effects of Freestream Turbulence on Rough Surface Turbulent Boundary Layers”, J Fluid Mech, 635:207-243, 2009. Torres-Nieves, S.N., Maldonado, V., Lebrón, J., Kang, H.S., Meneveau, C., and Castillo, L., “Free-stream Turbulence Effects on the Flow Around an S809 Wind Turbine Airfoil”, Proceedings of iTi (interdisciplinary turbulence initiative) 2010 Conference on Turbulence, Bertinoro, Italy, September 19-22, 2010.
Conference Proceedings
Torres-Nieves, S.N., Brzek, B., Lebrón-Bosques, J.R., Cal, R.B., Meneveau, C., and Castillo, L., “Isotropic Free-stream Turbulence Promotes Anisotropy in a Turbulent Boundary Layer”, Proceedings of 12th EUROMECH European Turbulence Conference, Marburg, Germany, September 7-10, 2009.
Torres-Nieves, S.N., Lebrón, J.R., Brzek, B., Cal, R.B., Meneveau, C., and Castillo, L., “Effect of Isotropic Free-stream Turbulence in Favorable Pressure Gradient Turbulent Boundary Layers over a Rough Surface”, Proceedings of IUTAM Symposium on The physics of wall-bounded flows on rough walls, Cambridge, UK, July 7-9, 2009.
She was a recipient of the Pratt and Whitney’s EAGLE Award and RAVE Award of Excellence (2014). Recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2007). Recipient of the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship (2007). Recipient of the National Science Foundation Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professorship (AGEP) Fellowship (2005). Recipient of the Edward A. Saibel Topper Award (RPI) (2005). Recipient of the National Science Foundation Puerto Rico Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Fellowship (2004). Recipient of the General Motors Corporation Merit Scholarship (2004). Recipient of the Allergan Medical Optics Merit Scholarship (2000-2005).
Dr. Guillermo Araya
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dr Araya holds a Bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering (Instituto Universitario Aeronautico, Cordoba, Argentina) and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering (U. of Puerto Rico Mayaguez). After completing his Ph.D. degree in Aeronautical Engineering in August 2008 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY), he joined the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) as a Postdoctoral Fellow under the supervision of Prof. Charles Meneveau. He was also a Research Assistant at Swansea University (UK) from 2009 to 2011 and a Research Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University (Lubbock, Texas) from 2011 to 2015.
His research interests include computational fluid dynamics of turbulent flows and heat transfer, parallel programming and algorithm development; particularly, for thermal-fluid and fluid-structure interaction problems with applications to the aerospace and energy industries. Dr. Araya has been recipient of research grants from NSF, ONR, ETF Renewable Energy Initiative (Texas), HYDAC Corporation and General Electric.
He has authored and co-authored 40 journal and refereed conference papers. Some of his most relevant publications include: Araya G., Castillo L. and Hussain F., The log behavior of the Reynolds shear stress in accelerating turbulent boundary layers, J. of Fluid Mechanics, Volume 775, pp 189 – 200 2015. V. P. Kiliyanpilakkil, S. Basu, A. Ruiz-Columbié, G. Araya, L. Castillo, B. Hirth, and W. Burgett, Buoyancy effects on the scaling characteristics of atmospheric boundary-layer wind fields in the mesoscale range, Phys. Rev. E 92, 033005, 2015. Araya G. and Castillo L., DNS of turbulent thermal boundary layers subjected to adverse pressure gradients, Physics of Fluids, 25, 095107 2013.