Four faculty receive named professorships // Mizzou Engineering

January 25, 2019

Graphic showing portraits of the four featured faculty. Caption: "Congratulations to our newest named professors! Henry He, Guoliang Huang, Jian Lin, Erik Loehr."

Henry He, Guoliang Huang, Jian Lin and Erik Loehr (L-R, top to bottom) received named professorships this week.

Last spring, faculty representatives from the College of Engineering developed a Faculty Honors Program to adhere to the campus guidelines for awarding faculty fellowships and honors. This program was approved by the Provost’s Office in March 2018.

To select this year’s honorees, Dean Elizabeth Loboa sought recommendations from the College’s Dean’s Council for Teaching Excellence and Dean’s Council for Research Excellence.

Henry He, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was named Robert Lee Tatum Distinguished Professor. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 2015 and serves as a member of the Dean’s Council for Research Excellence, which is comprised of the top 10 researchers by expenditure in the College. Since 2004, he has been awarded a total of 23 research grants, including 11 from the National Science Foundation, with five current NSF grants totaling nearly $2.7 million. His Google Scholar h-index is 31.

He is currently developing a major, multi-university NSF research proposal on smart road cyber-infrastructure networks for autonomous driving and is PI on four major, ongoing NSF research projects.

Guoliang Huang, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was named the James C. Dowell Professor of Engineering. Huang was named a top 50 researcher at MU in 2018, a year in which he had more than $826,000 in research expenditures. In the last 13 years, he has secured more than 20 nationally and internationally competitive research grants totaling $5.4 million. Since he arrived at MU in 2014, he has been awarded competitive research grants totaling $3.4 million. During the course of his career, he has produced more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in highly ranked journals. In 2018 alone, he attained 789 citations and published 20 journal articles, including in Advanced Materials and Physical Review Letters.

As a pioneering researcher, Huang is developing a programmable metamaterial for real-time structure dynamic control and is currently leading an NSF MRSEC proposal submission.

Jian Lin, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was named the Dean William R. Kimel and Mila Kimel Faculty Fellow in Engineering, which is presented to an early-career member of the faculty. Lin is one of nine COE faculty members who rank in the first quintile in his field, according to Academic Analytics. In the last four years, he has received the Emerging Young Investigator award from the Journal of Material Chemistry and the Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. The 55 papers Lin has published in top-tier journals in material/energy fields have been cited approximately 3,700 times, and he already has a Google Scholar h-index of 28.

This funding will support Lin’s continued work in autonomous material development and manufacturing powered by AI, scalable nanomanufacturing for energy storage and conversion, and 3D/4D printing.

Erik Loehr, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was named the Logan Professor. Loehr is known for developing the Missouri Method for design of deep foundations for landslide stabilization and as the father of geotechnical asset management. For the last decade, he has worked on a collaborative program to develop new design guidelines for the Missouri Department of Transportation, saving the state an estimated $20 million. He has been awarded 47 externally-funded research contracts totaling almost $10 million. Last year, Loehr was selected to serve influential roles in developing and revising national design manuals and design codes for the Federal Highway Administration, including service as lead author for one of 14 Geotechnical Engineering Circulars that serve as the basis for most geotechnical design in the United States. In 2017, Loehr was elected as a Fellow in the ASCE.

This honor will further strengthen Erik’s reputation for conducting innovative research that can be practically implemented.

All of the above honors are intended to be awarded for three years before evaluation again by the Dean’s Councils for Research and Teaching Excellence and will be reviewed on an annual basis to ensure good stewardship.