New Faculty 2012 - 2013
Applied Mathematics and Statistics
Willy Hereman – Professor & Department Head
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Willy Hereman starts his 24 year at CSM as Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Willy
received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Ghent in Belgium. Prior to joining Mines, he was a
NATO Research Fellow at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Iowan and
Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Willy has
published over a hundred research papers on the mathematics of wave phenomena. Supported by the National
Science Foundation, he develops mathematical methods and symbolic software to analyze nonlinear differential
and difference equations. Willy is a laureate of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium. Willy and his wife Hilde
live in Boulder. In his free time, he enjoys playing racquet ball and tennis, watching movies and travelling.
Deb Carney – Teaching Associate Professor
Dr. Deb Carney is excited to be joining the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department this fall as a Teaching
Associate Professor. Deb received her BS in mathematics from the University of Vermont in 1991 and her PhD in
mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1998. Deb met her husband Nic (also a
mathematician) on the first day of graduate school, and after a two postdoctoral stops in Texas and Connecticut
they arrived in Denver during the fall of 2002. After teaching for 9 years at the University of Denver, including one
year as Director of the Math Center, Deb is looking forward to the transition over to the Colorado School of Mines.
While Deb completed her graduate work in mathematical logic, she has more recently has become interested in
math education topics. While at DU, Deb was a pioneer in the use of technology and blended learning techniques
in math courses. Deb lives in Centennial, CO and is married with two children (Gwyneth 11 and Ethan 6). While
she was initially reluctant to move away from the east coast to Colorado, she loves it here now and is happy to visit
family and friends every summer.
Mike Nicholas – Teaching Associate Professor
Mike comes to Mines as a teaching associate professor in the department of applied mathematics and statistics.
He received his PhD in mathematics from Duke University. He then spent 4 years in New Orleans at Tulane
University as a teaching and research postdoc. Mike comes to Mines most recently from Carthage College, where
he worked as an assistant professor for one year. Mike's research involves numerical methods for boundary
integral equations. He has developed spectrally accurate algorithms in electromagnetic scattering and in fluid
dynamics. Mike has been teaching mathematics for ten years and finds great satisfaction in the classroom
experience. He is particularly fond of teaching freshman calculus and numerical analysis. Mike plays all sports but
is good at none of them. He has climbed the highest peaks in Utah and Nevada and is eager to tackle Colorado
next. Mike is married with four children. His spare time often involves Legos and toy ponies.
Stephen Pankavich – Assistant Professor
Prof. Steve Pankavich received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. His
doctoral work focused on the existence, uniqueness, stability, and computational approximation of systems of
nonlinear differential equations that arise in the study of plasma dynamics. Upon finishing his doctoral thesis, he
served as a Zorn Postdoctoral Fellow within the Department of Mathematics at Indiana University. Prior to joining
Mines, Steve had also held tenure-track positions at the University of Texas at Arlington and the United States
Naval Academy. While a postdoc, Dr. Pankavich began a long-standing collaboration with the Center for Cell and
Virus Theory at Indiana, developing novel analytic and computational methods for the simulation of multiscale
physical systems. With continuing support from the National Science Foundation and shared support from the
National Institutes of Health, Steve has published over twenty papers in the fields of Kinetic Theory, Partial
Differential Equations, Computational Mathematics, Chemical Physics, and Mathematical Physics. He and his
fiancé, Rebecca Swanson, live in Arvada. He enjoys tennis, hockey, foreign travel, finance, and percussion, all while
possessing an affinity for good sushi, red wine, and cheesecake.
Rebecca Swanson – Teaching Associate Professor
Dr. Rebecca Swanson received her B.A. from Dakota Wesleyan University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana
University, all in Mathematics. While Rebecca was attending graduate school at Indiana University, she received
the James P. Williams Memorial award, an annual award that recognizes the top three first year graduate students,
as well as the David A. Rothrock Teaching Award to recognize her teaching record. Her thesis work at Indiana was
in Combinatorics, and Dr. Swanson’s research interests include Topological and Algebraic Combinatorics as well as
Graph Theory. She enjoys teaching Calculus, Discrete Mathematics, Introductory proof courses, and upper level
pure mathematics courses, among others. Prior to arriving at CSM, Rebecca was an Assistant Professor of
Mathematics at Nebraska Wesleyan University, where she taught a variety of mathematics courses and advised
the Math Club.
Dr. Swanson lives with her fiancé, Steve Pankavich, in Arvada. In her spare time, she likes to read, run, play the
piano, and travel. Fortunately, mathematics has given her many opportunities to travel: In addition to attending
various conferences, she spent a year abroad as an undergraduate with the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics
program and taught at Sun Yat Sen University in Guangzhou, China, this past summer.
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terri Hogue – Associate Professor
Professor Hogue received her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and M.S. and Ph.D. from the
Department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona. Professor Hogue’s research centers on
understanding hydrologic and land surface processes, with much of her work focused in semi-arid regions. Projects
include investigating catchment response to wildfire, as well as the impact of urbanization and climate variability
on land-atmosphere interactions. Professor Hogue uses field and experimental methods, modeling and
optimization techniques, as well as remote sensing data in her investigations. The overarching goal of her research
program is to improve the prediction of hydrologic fluxes for better management of water resources, to assess
human impacts on the environment, and to mitigate the effects of natural hazards. Professor Hogue teaches a
range of graduate and undergraduate courses, from theoretical modeling to intensive field and laboratory-based
curriculum. Prior to coming to the Colorado School of Mines, Dr. Hogue was at UCLA in the Civil and Environmental
Engineering Department. While at UCLA, she was twice awarded Professor of the Year by the UCLA American
Society of Civil Engineers student chapter, was awarded the UCLA Northrup Grumman Excellence in Teaching
award by the School of Engineering, and was awarded Professor of the Year by the School of Engineering Student
Engineering Society. Professor Hogue has received the National Science Foundation Early Faculty CAREER award
and was recently invited by NSF to speak at a “Hazards on the Hill” Event at the U.S. Senate.
Susan Reynolds – Teaching Associate Professor
Susan is a professional engineer and registered architect with specialties in structural analysis and design, historic
preservation technology, and sustainable / integrated design approaches for buildings. She received her M.S. in
Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois in 2004, and holds degrees in Architecture and Spanish from Auburn
University. Her 10-year professional architectural and engineering experience includes design with all four of the
major structural materials in both new and existing construction. She believes that in addition to learning about
today’s most advanced structural materials, engineering students should also be well-versed in archaic building
materials and methods as to become sensitive and knowledgeable stewards of our shared cultural heritage.
Preservation is an inherently sustainable design approach to building, as it increases the building’s life cycle and
minimizes depletion of natural resources that comprise building materials. In her former position at Tuskegee
University, Susan taught Structures I, II, and III; Soils and Foundations; Historic Preservation; Construction
Methods; and Construction Safety. She is a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Accredited
Professional and a proponent of Building Information Modeling (BIM).
Kate Smits – Assistant Professor Doctor of Philosophy, Environmental Science and Engineering, Colorado School of
Mines, Masters of Science, Civil Engineering - Water Resources, The University of Texas at Austin, Bachelors of
Science, Environmental Engineering, United States Air Force Academy. Kathleen has taught undergraduate and
graduate level courses in fluid mechanics, surface and groundwater hydrology, contaminant transport, hazardous
waste site remediation, introductory environmental engineering, introductory civil engineering and field
engineering. Kathleen Smits' research interests are centered on advancing the knowledge of shallow subsurface
multiphase process affected by heat and mass flux dynamics at the land/atmospheric interfaces at a wide range of
physical scales. The basic aim of her research is to combine theoretical, numerical and experimental approaches
to address hydrological processes occurring near the earth's surface.
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Randy Haupt – Professor & Department Head
Randy L. Haupt received the BSEE from the USAF Academy (1978), the MS in Engineering Management from
Western New England College (1982), the MSEE from Northeastern University (1983), and the PhD in EE from The
University of Michigan (1987). He was an RF Staff Consultant at Ball Aerospace & Technologies, Corp. a Senior
Scientist and Department Head at the Applied Research Laboratory of Penn State, Professor and Department Head
of ECE at Utah State, Professor and Chair of EE at the University of Nevada Reno, and Professor of EE at the USAF
Academy. He was a project engineer for the OTH-B radar and a research antenna engineer for Rome Air
Development Center early in his career. He is co-author of the books Practical Genetic Algorithms, 2 ed., John
Wiley & Sons, 2004, Genetic Algorithms in Electromagnetics, John Wiley & Sons, 2007, and Introduction to
Adaptive Antennas, SciTech, 2010, as well as author of Antenna Arrays a Computation Approach, John Wiley &
Sons, 2010. Dr. Haupt was the Federal Engineer of the Year in 1993 and is a Fellow of the IEEE and Applied
Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES). He serves as an Associate Editor for the "Ethically Speaking"
column in the IEEE AP-S Magazine.
Yong Bakos –Teaching Assistant Professor
Yong Bakos is a professional software engineer and Teaching Assistant Professor of Computer Science. He
coordinates innovations in the Programming Concepts course and teaches mobile device programming, database
management, Web application development and the Elements of Computing Systems. His research interests
include software engineering, data mining, sociological impacts of technology, instructional technology and
computational art.
Stephanie Claussen – Teaching Associate Professor
(Joining in January 2013) Stephanie Claussen graduated in June with her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from
Stanford. Her thesis research was on high-performance silicon-compatible optical modulators for use in optical
interconnect systems. In addition to her engineering work, she also spent considerable time while at Stanford
across campus in the School of Education learning about science and engineering education, which culminated in a
Ph.D. Minor in Education and a journal publication. Stephanie has a Masters in EE, also from Stanford, and a
Bachelors in EE from MIT. While at Stanford, she was actively involved with the Stanford Optical Society’s Outreach
Committee, the Stanford student chapter of the American Society for Engineering Education, and the Stanford
Triathlon team. In August, 2012, Stephanie will travel to Nepal for two months to lead a pilot project of a
technology product designed for use in rural schools.
Hua Wang- Assistant Professor
Hua Wang received the B.S. degree in Electronic Techniques and Information System from Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China in 1999, the M.S. degree in Signal Processing from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in
2003, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2012. He was an
embedded software engineering at the Global Software Group, Motorola, Singapore from 2003-2007. He joined
the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Colorado School of Mines in 2012 as an
assistant professor. His major research interests include machine learning and data mining, as well as their
applications in bioinformatics, medical image computing, health informatics and computer vision, where he aims
at developing efficient algorithms with nice theoretical guarantees to solve practical problems involved large scale
data.
William Bahn - Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor
William received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCCS in 2012 and is returning to the Mines community,
where he received is B.Sc, (Engineering Physics, 1991) and M.Eng (Engineering Systems, 2004) degrees. In the
intervening years, he has worked as a senior engineer designing full-custom mixed-signal application specific
integrated circuits and as an instructor and research scientist at the U.S. Air Force Academy. While at the Air Force
Academy, he and his two colleagues received the departmental Researcher of the Year award for their groundbreaking work on jam-resistance communication without shared secrets. He lives in Larkspur along with his wife
and daughter. This fall he will be teaching Introduction to Computer Science and Principles of Programming
Languages.
Mechanical Engineering
Greg Jackson – Professor and Head of Mechanical Engineering
Greg earned his B.S. from Rice University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University where he performed
research on liquid fuel combustion. After completing his Ph.D., he joined Precision Combustion Inc. in 1993 where
he led research and development efforts on catalytic reactors for low-NOx combustion and on catalytic ignition for
various applications. He joined the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland in 1997, where
he served as a full Professor and Division Leader of the Thermal, Fluid, and Energy Science division. He also has
served as the Associate Director of the campus-wide Univ. of Maryland Energy Research Center. He has a breadth
of research activities in PEM fuel cell systems and electrocatalysis, solid oxide fuel cells, and catalytic and solar
thermal reactors for energy conversion and H2 production. His research includes a combination of fundamental
experiments and design model development and validation, which has made an impact in both the scientific and
industrial R&D communities. He serves as an officer in the High-Temperature Materials Division of the
Electrochemical Society and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Energy Resources Technology. He recently
advised a student design team which won the international DoE-sponsored Hydrogen Design Contest for a
campus-based combined heat, hydrogen, and power plant operated on local waste streams.
Jenifer Blacklock – Teaching Associate Professor
Jenifer joins the Department of Mechanical Engineering as a Teaching Associate Professor. Jenifer received her
Ph.D. from Wayne State University/Max Plank Institute-Potsdam in biomedical engineering. Jenifer also holds a
MS in biomedical engineering from Wayne State University, and BS degrees both in Manufacturing Engineering
and Engineering Management from Miami University. Jenifer comes to CSM from her most recent appointment at
NIST in Boulder where she was a National Research Council Materials Engineer working on a project that aims to
functionalize and standardize proteins coated on gold nanoparticles. Before the NIST appointment, Jenifer was a
postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. Jenifer lives in Boulder and has recently
completed her first Ironman-distance triathlon!
Steven DeCaluwe – Assistant Professor
Dr. Steven DeCaluwe comes to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at CSM after completing a National
Research Council post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He
obtained his undergraduate degree from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University in Elementary Education and
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Mathematics, and taught 1 and 2 grade for 3 years before attending graduate school at the University of
Maryland. His PhD work focused on the use of cerium oxide as a carbon-tolerant catalyst in solid oxide fuel cells,
and involved experimental work as well as mathematical modeling. Steven’s work at NIST utilized neutron
reflectometry experiments to study solid electrolyte interphase formation in Lithium-ion batteries and water
uptake in thin-film polymers for PEM fuel cells. His work at CSM will focus on interfacial studies of electrochemical
energy systems, in particular the use of in situ measurements to validate and assist in scale-up of atomistic models.
Derrick Rodriguez – Teaching Associate Professor
Derrick joins the Department of Mechanical Engineering as a Teaching Associate Professor. Derrick received his
Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. Derrick and also holds an MS
in Environmental Engineering and a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Wyoming. Derrick has previously
worked as an adjunct in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as a research faculty member in the
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and was employed by various consulting firms providing
environmental engineering support to the Department of Energy’s Environmental Restoration Program. Derrick is
also a registered professional engineer in the state of Idaho. Derrick lives in Applewood, has two children, and is
an avid motorcyclist, enjoying both motocross track riding as well as riding on the street on his Ducati.