Provost announces promotion of 6 engineering faculty members

Auburn University Provost Timothy Boosinger has announced the names of faculty who have been awarded promotion, tenure or both at Auburn University for 2017. The following Auburn Engineering faculty received promotions:

Sushil Adhikari, the Alumni Associate Professor of biosystems engineering, has been promoted to full professor. He joined the Auburn Engineering faculty in 2008 after receiving his doctorate in biological engineering from Mississippi State University. Adhikari served as interim head of the Department of Biosystems Engineering from 2016-17 and is currently the associate director of the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts. His research interests include biomass gasification, biomass pyrolysis, hydrothermal liquefaction, torrefaction, biodiesel production, hydrogen production from bio-wastes, anaerobic digestion and bio-oil upgrading.

Adhikari	Auad	Baskiyar
Knight	Thurow	Turochy

Maria Auad, associate professor of chemical engineering, has been promoted to full professor. Auad earned her doctorate in materials science from the University of Mar del Plata in Argentina and then served as a research assistant at the University of Southern California before joining the Auburn faculty in 2006. She was interim chair of the former Department of Polymer and Fiber Engineering and now serves as director of the Center for Polymer and Advanced Composites. Her research interests include polymer materials science, polymer nanocomposites, flow behavior of polymers, rheology, control of microstructure and nanostructure in materials, polymers for structural and biomedical applications and shape memory polymers.

Sanjeev Baskiyar, associate professor of computer science and software engineering, has been promoted to full professor. He joined the Auburn Engineering faculty in 1999. Baskiyar earned his doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Baskiyar’s research has made fundamental contributions to scheduling, real-time and embedded computing, and computer architecture, which are among the core areas of computer science. His research work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Baskiyar’s experience also includes computer software and engineering work at the Unisys Corp. and Tata Motors. 

Roy Knight, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been promoted to associate professor. After earning his doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas, Knight became a member of the Auburn faculty in 1986. Knight has been recognized with many teaching awards at Auburn, including the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Outstanding Professor Award and the William F. Walker Teaching Award. His research interests include thermal management of electronics, electronics cooling, heat transfer modeling, heat sink optimization, computational fluid dynamics, compact refrigeration systems, heat transfer enhancement and phase change cooling of electronics.

Brian Thurow, the W. Allen and Martha Reed Associate Professor of aerospace engineering, has been promoted to full professor. He joined the Auburn Engineering faculty in 2005 after completing his doctorate in mechanical engineering from Ohio State University. He has served as chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering since 2016. Thurow’s research interests include 3-D flow diagnostics, light field imaging, tomography, unsteady turbulent flows and hypersonics.

Rod Turochy, the James M. Hunnicutt Associate Professor of Traffic Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering, has been promoted to full professor. He earned his doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Virginia and spent nearly two years as a research scientist at the Virginia Transportation Research Council before joining the Auburn faculty in 2002. He is director of the Alabama Technology Transfer Center and received the 2017 National James M. Robbins Excellence in Teaching Award from Chi Epsilon. Before pursuing graduate studies, Turochy worked in transportation engineering for the Virginia Department of Transportation. His research interests include traffic operations, traffic data analysis and highway safety.