Faculty

Director - Ofodike A. Ezekoye, Ph.D.| Thermal Fluids Systems and Transport Phenomena
Dr. Ezekoye is an expert in combustion and heat transfer in high temperature and reacting systems such as combustion engines, furnaces and structure fires. He has been a pi or co-pi on funded research from the U.S. Department of Commerce, AFOSR, and DOE. Dr. Ezekoye has published over 200 journal and conference papers in heat transfer and combustion. HIs research covers a range of applications from fundamentals of combustion systems to scientific support of the fire service in developing fire-fighting tactics.

Vaibhav Bahadur, Ph.D.| Clean Energy Technology, Nano and Micro-scale Engineering, Thermal Fluid Systems and Transport Phenomena
Dr. Bahadur holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University. He also held a postdoc position at Harvard University. His research interests include thermal-fluids sciences, materials chemistry, machine learning and micro-nanofabrication. Dr. Bahadur’s research group conducts fundamental and applied research in these areas with applications in energy-water systems, carbon capture and sequestration, hydrogen and thermal management.

Michael Bryant, Ph.D.| Introduction to Manufacturing Systems
Dr. Bryant specializes in tribology (study of friction, wear, lubrication and associated devices such as bearings, brushes and brakes), the design of mechatronic systems (integrated mechanical and electronic systems), and system diagnostics of machinery. Dr. Bryant is developing a new class of computers for solution of differential equations. He is a faculty member of the Dynamic Systems & Control and Manufacturing & Design programs of the UT Mechanical Engineering Department.

Rich Crawford, Ph.D.| Advanced Design and Manufacturing, Engineering Education
Dr. Crawford is the director of the Design Projects Program in the UT Department of Mechanical Engineering. He received his B.S.M.E. from Louisiana State University, and his M.S.M.E. and Ph.D. from Purdue University. Dr. Crawford has received multiple awards for exemplary engineering education. He also has developed a research program to investigate a broad range of topics in computer-aided mechanical design, design theory and methodology and education.

Dragan Djurdjanovic, Ph.D.| Analytics and Probalistic Modeling
Dr. Djurdjanovic obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and in Applied Mathematics from the University of Nis, Serbia, his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He was the director of the recently graduated NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (I-UCRC) on Intelligent Maintenance Systems at The University of Texas at Austin and is associate director of the NSF Engineering Research Center on Nanomanufacturing Systems (NASCENT Center).

Bob Duvic, Ph.D.| Finance – Corporate, International Finance
Dr. Duvic is a professor of instruction in the UT McCombs School of Business Department of Finance. He received his B.A. from Tulane University, M.S. from the Florida Institute of Technology, and MBA and Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Duvic’s areas of research include corporate capital budgeting, international corporate financial management and international foreign exchanges markets. He has received more than 30 teaching awards.

Joesph Koo, Ph.D. | Material Science and Engineering
Dr. Koo joined the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at UT Austin in 2004. He is Senior Research Scientist and Director of Polymer Nanocomposites Technology Lab. He is affiliated with the Advanced Manufacturing Design Center and Texas Materials Institute, Prior to joining UT Austin, he was employed in the aerospace industry for about 20 years by Aerojet, BAE Systems, FMC, and NGC.

Raul Longoria, Ph.D. | Robotics and Intelligent Mechanical Systems
Dr. Longoria received his B.S.M.E. and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. His teaching and research focus on development and application of multi-disciplinary dynamic system modeling, vehicle system dynamics and controls, electromechanical system modeling and simulation and application of machine learning and AI for smart hand tools. Dr. Longoria is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas and a member of the ASME, IEEE, SAE, ISTVS and ASAIO.

Mitchell W. Pryor, Ph.D. | Nuclear and Radiation Engineering
Dr. Pryor earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin with an emphasis on the modeling, simulation, and operation of redundant manipulators. Since earning his PhD, Dr. Pryor has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in the ME and ECE departments and conducted research in the area of applied robotics and automation with an emphasis on robotics in hazardous environments including nuclear, energy, and defense.

Yaguo Wang, Ph.D. | Clean Energy Technology, Thermal Fluids Systems, Complex Systems
Dr. Wang received her bachelor’s degree in Safety Science and Engineering at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and her Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. Dr. Wang’s research addresses many fundamental problems encountered in a wide variety of disciplines: thermoelectrics, photovoltaics, gas fuel generation, quantum-cascade lasers, etc. Her research group has set up several ultrafast time-resolved spectrometers at UT, capable of capturing the ultrafast phenomenon occurring from femtosecond (10-15 s) to picosecond (10-12 s) time scale.