Three Missouri S&T faculty will serve as 2020-21 Presidential Engagement Fellows during the 2020-21 academic year and share their expertise and research discoveries with Missouri citizens.

The S&T fellows are:

• Dr. David Rogers, the Karl F. Hasselmann Missouri Chair in Geological Engineering
• Dr. David Westenberg, associate professor of biological sciences and co-director of the Missouri S&T Science Education and Quantitative Literacy (SEQL) program
• Dr. Guirong (Grace) Yan, assistant professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering, and director of the Wind Hazards Mitigation Laboratory (WHAM).

Rogers is an expert in the geoforensics of dam, levee and slope stability failures, flood control and fluvial geomorphology, the Mississippi Delta, and site characterization for seismic site response. He is available to discuss various topics related to the evolution of flood control practice, dam and levee failures, landslide dams, the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal and the Tennessee Valley Authority, among other geological topics.

Westenberg has led several series of interactive workshops for area children and the general public, as well as K-12 teachers, to show the importance of synthetic biology and its role in everyday life. Westenberg is also chair of the American Society for Microbiology Committee for K-12 Outreach. His research interests include antibacterial materials, microbiology education and rhizosphere microbiology. He is available to speak on any of these topics or lead K-12 workshops.

Yan studies wind hazard mitigation and computational fluid dynamics, structural health monitoring, damage detection and more. She’s built two small-scale tornado simulators that use models to mimic the destruction of high-speed twisters and hopes to build a larger-scale simulator at S&T. She is available to speak about structural health and damage detection, resilient infrastructural systems, smart materials, bridge engineering, and wireless sensor networks. 

Through the UM System Presidential Engagement program, the faculty members will serve as ambassadors in the region and speak to local organizations and communities about their areas of research and expertise. There is no cost for an organization or individual to host a speaker. To request a speaker at an event, visit umsystem.edu/forms/pef-speaking-request-form.