An acclaimed scientist known for his work in image processing tops the list of new faculty slated to join West Virginia University’s Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources this fall.

Nasser Nasrabadi will be a professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Formerly a senior research scientist with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Maryland, Nasrabadi has been internationally recognized for his research in the areas of image processing, neural networks, automatic target recognition and video compression and its transmission over high-speed networks. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics; and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

“Dr. Nasrabadi is renowned for his pioneering contributions to vector quantization for image compression,” says Brian Woerner, chair of the Lane Department. “He is currently working in the areas of data fusion and video analytics and will help bring senior leadership to our faculty working in biometrics and image processing.”

Nasrabadi earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Imperial College in London, England. He previously held academic appointments at Johns Hopkins University, the State University of New York at Buffalo and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Joining Nasrabadi in the Lane Department will be Associate Professor Jeremy Dawson and assistant professors Kevin Bandura, Victor Fragoso, Saiph Savage and Yanqui Song.

Dawson is a familiar face at WVU, having earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the institution. A specialist in the areas of photonics, nanofabrication, biometrics data sensing and rapid DNA analysis, he most recently served as a research assistant professor in the department.

Bandura has done extensive work in the area of radio astronomy, most notably at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank. WVU recently invested $1 million in the facility and uses it for research and educational activities. Bandura earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Both recent graduates of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Fragaso specializes in the area of computer vision and machine learning, while Savage is noted for her work in data analytics for social networks and human computer interaction. A graduate of Tsinghua University in China, Song has conducted research in the areas of machine learning for large data sets and text mining and analytics.

A specialist in the area of ecological and water resources engineering, Omar Abdul-Aziz joins the faculty in civil and environmental engineering as an assistant professor. He previously served as a member of the faculty at Florida International University, where he received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to investigate and predict the dynamics of stream water quality and ecosystem health in complex urban-natural basins.

After earning his doctorate in production engineering from the University of Bremen in Germany, Thorsten Wuest conducted research in the areas of advanced and smart manufacturing at BIBA, Bremen’s scientific engineering research institute that deals with the issues of production and logistics systems. He joins the Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering as an assistant professor.

Joining the staff in chemical engineering later this fall, Ahmed Ismail conducts research in the areas of biomass and biopolymers. A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.) and Yale University, he most recently served as a junior professor at Rhine-Westphalia Institute of Technology Aachen in Germany, where he led the Laboratory for Molecular Simulations and Transformations.

Since 2012, the Statler College has hired 33 new faculty members.

-WVU-

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CONTACT: Mary C. Dillon, Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources
304.293.4086, Mary.Dillon@mail.wvu.edu
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