Faculty & Programs

It’s never easy to shift a paradigm. Which makes compelling efforts to do so worthy of attention. The kind that comes with a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award.

If you’re able to walk without pain, give a silent shout-out to your cartilage. 

Every time you take a step, this flexible tissue absorbs the load and transfers it to the bone, allowing you to move freely. But unlike bone, if cartilage gets damaged—by injury, wear and tear, or inflammation—it can’t regenerate. Over time, the damaged tissue degrades, and walking becomes progressively more painful as the bones come in contact with each other.

Civil engineering professor Dan M. Frangopol, the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture, has received the following recognitions:

The building blocks of artificial intelligence—computing power, data, and mathematical models—have been around for decades. But only recently have they been employed at a level of sophistication and on a large enough scale to weave machine learning into our everyday lives.

Natasha Vermaak, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics, is the founding chair of a new Technical Committee for the Design of Engineering Materials (DEM TC) within the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Anand Jagota, professor and founding chair of Lehigh University’s bioengineering department, has arrived at a milestone in his 15 years of researching friction and adhesion—one that could lead to innovations in tires, robotics, and biomaterials down the road. 

It’s often the first thing we notice about a vehicle, and it reveals a lot: how new (or not) the vehicle is, how it’s been cared for, where it’s been driven. 

“Consumers are extremely picky regarding the quality of the paint job on any car they purchase, new or old, and the 10- to 20-year appearance of a car depends on 10 to 20 critical minutes of application and drying,” says James Gilchrist, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Lehigh University’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. 

For the second time in his distinguished career, Arup K. SenGupta, P.C. Rossin Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering, has received a grant through the Fulbright Scholar Program to conduct research in India.

Why do certain proteins in the body bind with some substances, but not with others?

The answer could be the difference between a drug working or not. The answer, however, is elusive by virtue of the sheer scope of mutations that make proteins vary between each other, and between individuals.