Rossin Connection: Lehigh University Engineering

Her focus is on fundamental science, but everything Whitney Blocher McTigue does in the lab is aimed towards applications in the real world. As an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, Blocher McTigue is working toward a future where innovative wound care and shelf-stable medicine lead to healthier lives. And for her, the drive to make that happen is personal.

Rossin Connection is hosted and produc...

Like a lot of kids, Dominic DiFranzo spent loads of time on the internet when he was growing up. It was where he could connect with other people who shared his passion for “nerdy things” like science fiction and Japanese anime. Pretty soon, the web itself captivated him–how it worked technologically, and eventually, how people built online communities. Today, he researches how to make the internet more “pro-social,” and a safer spa...

Javad Khazaei came to the U.S from Iran. He was the first member of his family to leave the country, and at first, the transition was a tough one. But he pushed through what he calls, “the challenge that every international student has to overcome.” Today, he’s an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. In this episode, he talks about an influential trip he took as a kid with his dad, how the encouraging words o...

Growing up, Siddha Pimputkar spent summers at his grandparents’ house, which meant spending lots of time figuring out how to maintain an old house and a large garden. That love of problem solving stayed with him, and he eventually turned it into a career in materials science, a discipline that, he says, connects to all the others in some shape or form. Today, he’s researching a novel method of growing cubic boron nitride, a materia...

When Farrah Moazeni started out as a chemical engineering student in Iran, she figured she’d end up working for her country’s petrochemical industry. But the environmental impacts of the business made her change course. She came to the U.S. to study renewable energy and got her PhD in civil engineering. After an invaluable (and memorable!) experience working in industry, she came to Lehigh where she’s now an assistant professor of ...

According to the Centers for Disease Control, antibiotic resistance is a global public health threat that was associated with nearly 5 million deaths worldwide in 2019. In this episode, associate professor Angela Brown explains why these powerful, important drugs can also do harm, how her research has influenced how and when she takes them, and the work her lab is doing to develop new strategies to fight bacterial infections. We al...

It's really, really hard to make something swim like a fish. But understanding just how these animals move can help in a range of applications–from the design of renewable energy devices, to underwater vehicles, and forecasting the impact of climate change on fish populations. In this episode, associate professor of mechanical engineering Keith Moored talks about how his childhood love of the ocean led him to diving with manta...

Chances are, you’ve never given much (if any!) thought to the films that coat things like your phone charger. But without them–and without their exact dimensions of thickness and hardness–the technology we rely on every day would be useless. In this episode, associate professor Nick Strandwitz explains what he calls the “magic” of atomic layer deposition, a thin film growth technique that, among many other things, helps our compute...

As a kid growing up in Amman, Jordan, Karmel Shehadeh knew she wanted to one day be a professor and a researcher. Today, she is an assistant professor in the department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. And at the end of her faculty profile, she includes an unusual line. It’s not a sentiment you typically come across in such write-ups, but it’s targeted toward a special group of students. In this episode, you’ll find out why s...

 The James Webb Space Telescope launched into orbit on Christmas Day 2021. It’s the largest, most powerful space science telescope that has ever been built. It will enable us to look more than 13 billion years back in time, helping us answer questions like, Where do we come from? and Are we alone?  It took 20 years, thousands of technicians, scientists, and engineers, and 40 million hours to build. One of those engineers is Lehigh ...

Sibel Pamukcu is an expert in the field of electroremediation of soils and groundwater, and her pioneering research spans more than three decades of work. But Sibel is a pioneer of another sort as well. She was the first woman faculty member of the department of civil and environmental engineering. In this episode, she talks about becoming an engineer, her groundbreaking research, the challenges she faced in her early years in the ...

When Hannah Dailey says she feels like she's been at Lehigh her whole life, she means it. She did her undergrad in mechanical engineering here, came back for her master's and PhD, and today she’s an assistant professor specializing in medical devices. In this episode, she talks about her journey from "terrified" transfer student to entrepreneur to helping surgeons improve patient care. She also talks about the e...

How can we get more students interested in chemical engineering? Ask the students. The result of that somewhat novel approach is a new course called Coffee and Cosmetics: Engineering of Consumer Products.  In this episode, Professor James Gilchrist shares the origin story of the class, the unique role of its creators, and how for the first time in his teaching career, Gilchrist wasn’t the expert in the room.

The episode b...

Anand Ramamurthi is the new professor and chair of Lehigh's bioengineering department. In this episode, he talks about his research journey, and how an early fascination with the human body led to the realization that engineers can play a significant role in treating disease.

Rossin Connection is hosted and produced by Christine Fennessy, with support from the Dean's office at the P.C. Rossin College of Engineer...

Matt Bilsky is a Lehigh alum and an entrepreneur. Growing up, he was constantly building and inventing things, and that creator mindset helped him not only design his own PhD program, but start two companies focused on solving those “Wouldn’t it be nice if...?” situations. Here’s the story of how a K’NEX kid became a problem-solving CEO—and what startup life sounds like in the era of COVID-19.

Learn more about FLX Solutio...

 Osteoarthritis occurs when the protective cartilage that cushions the ends of your bones wears down over time. It’s the most common form of arthritis, and it affects more than 31 million Americans. Lesley Chow recently received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for her work on a technique that may someday help cartilage regrow. In this episode, Lesley talks about the role of cartilage in the body, why injuries to...

This is the second half of our interview with professor of practice, Terry Hart. It begins in 1978, just after Hart was selected from 8,000 applicants to be one of 35 astronauts known as Group 8, the first to include African Americans, Asian Americans, and women.

Hart talks about training for his historic 1984 mission to space, why weightlessness was initially pretty awful, and about the one failure NASA didn’t anticipate...

Terry Hart '68, '88H, is a Lehigh alum and a professor of practice in mechanical engineering and mechanics. He's also a former telecommunications executive, fighter pilot, and astronaut. His life is a series of remarkable stories, some of which he was planning on sharing with students as commencement speaker for the 2020 class. But like everything else, graduation was upended by the pandemic.

Host Christine ...

At the time, it was the hardest decision he'd ever made. But when Peter Schwarzenberg '16 quit running cross country in his junior year, it was a move that changed his life. Today, he's a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering and mechanics developing a virtual technique that can help doctors better predict healing in tibial fractures. That research made him just one of 10 recipients in the U.S. last year of the Ins...