Dr. Sohail Anwar is an Associate Professor of Engineering at the Altoona College of The Pennsylvania State University. In addition, he is a Professional Associate of the Management Development Programs and Services at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Dr. Anwar has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the "Journal of Engineering Technology." He is currently serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the "International Journal of Modern Engineering" and the "Encyclopedia of Energy Engineering & Technology." In addition, he is serving as the Series Editor of the "Nanotechnology and Energy Series," Taylor and Francis Group/CRC Press.

David Barnes teaches in the areas of Information Sciences and Technology and Security and Risk Analysis. His research interests include operating systems, computer and network security, forensics and risk. Information on courses he teaches can be found at www.personal.psu.edu/drb21. He has an A.B. in economics from Duke University and a J.D. from the Penn State University Dickinson School of Law.

Todd D. Batzel received the B.S. and PhD. degrees in electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in 1984 and 2000, respectively, and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, in 1989. Currently, he is an associate professor of electrical engineering at Penn State Altoona. His research interests include electric machines, electric motor controls, power electronics, predictive diagnostics for electric machinery, artificial intelligence applications to control, and embedded control systems.

In addition to his position as the supervisor of the Penn State Altoona engineering student and research labs, Eric Beaver is a part-time instructor of IET 216, covering topics of computer networking and databases. He joined the Penn State staff in 2009 and has been teaching since 2010. He brings almost 10 years of networking experience, specializing in wireless WAN/LAN technologies, and continues to work with local companies in this capacity. Mr. Beaver earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State University in 2002. Serving in an advisory role, he works with the Penn State Altoona Motorsports Club in their involvement with the international collegiate design competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).

Mr. Belsterling is a Certified Fraud Examiner and has 25 years of experience in Accounting, Management and Consulting. He was employed by an international firm, a regional CPA firm, and worked in the Automobile Industry for 17 years, most recently as a Controller for one of the 100 largest auto groups in the United States. Mr. Belsterling has experience in Human Resources Management, Marketing, Inventory Management, Customer Relationship Management and Management Information Systems administration. As a sole proprietor, he has provided representation for clients in connection with business acquisitions, as well as sales, and he has prepared corporate tax returns, financial statements and business valuations for clients in Real Estate, Engineering, the Transportation Industry and the Automobile Industry. Mr. Belsterling has also served as President and Chairman of the Board for a Non-Profit organization. He received his B.S. in Accounting and his Master of Business Administration degree from Waynesburg University.

Currently serves as the Director of Operations for Home Nursing Agency Healthcare in Huntingdon, PA. Past work experience includes Campus Director for an associate-degree granting institution as well as 10 years as a small-business owner. She earned her BSBA at Clarion University of Pennsylvania and her MSBA at Penn State, University Park. She resides in Warriors Mark with her husband, son and two Labs.

James M. Chen, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, earned his doctorate at The George Washington University in 2011. His primary area of research lies in multiscale mechanics, computational nanoscience, computational solid/fluid mechanics, with particular interest in the electrodynamics of functional nano-materials and generalized continuum theory for multi-physics. His doctoral work focused on the development of theoretical derivation for Micropolar electromagnetic fluids and computational fluid dynamics on high order scheme (e.g. Spectral Difference Method). He is currently focused on extending results and techniques from previous research into energy harvesting at both macro- and micro-scales. He has published more than 15 peer-reviewed articles in the leading journals and is currently serving on the editorial board of "Nanoscience and Nanotechnology" and "Journal of Advanced Mathematics and Applications." He is also one of the founding members and technical committee for ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute on Nanomechanics and Nanomaterials and Honorary Fellow of Australian Institute of High Energetic Materials (AIHEM).

Jack currently is the Chief Operating Officer of Link Computer Corporation and has been employed by Link for 22 years. Prior to Link, he was the Treasurer at LEGENT Corporation in Pittsburgh and prior to LEGENT was a Senior Accountant with the public accounting firm, Peat, Marwick & Mitchell. Jack is Certified Public Accountant and Certified Management Accountant. He graduated summa cum laude from Bucknell University in 1984 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration majoring in Accounting. He earned a Master’s of Science in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon in 1990 with a concentration in Finance. He is active on the Executive Board of the Blair County Chamber of Commerce, the Executive Advisory Board for SIFE at Penn State Altoona, the Board of Directors of Hollidaysburg Rotary and is active with many other charitable and community groups. He is married to Andrea (Davis) Collins and has four children.

Mihai Comanescu received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering form Bucharest Polytechnic University in 1992 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, in 2001 and 2005 respectively. He is currently an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Penn State Altoona. His research interests are in the areas of power conversion, power electronics, AC motor drives, sliding mode control and renewable energy. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a member of the Industrial Electronics Society.

Education: AS Forest Technology, Williamsport Area CC BS Electrical Engineering Technology, Penn State ME Electrical Engineering, Penn State Research Interests: Power Electronics Traction Motors Vibrational Analysis

Irene Ferrara joined the engineering faculty at Penn State Altoona in August 1995. Currently, she is the Coordinator of the Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology program, a position she has held since January 2005. In the past, she has taught classes in computer-aided design, programmable logic controllers, quality control, career preparation and job skills, and materials science. Irene received her B.S. in Engineering Science from the Pennsylvania State University and her M.S. in Mechanics and Materials Science from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Mr. Girard is a part time lecturer and teaches undergraduate courses at Penn State Altoona as well as at the Pennsylvania Highlands Community College in science and engineering technology. Mr. Girard has taught courses in physics, statics, strength of materials, and quality control. Mr. Girard has an M.S. degree in Systems Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.S. degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology from The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College. Mr. Girard is also a graduate of the Defense Language Institute, where he completed the Russian Basic Course while serving on active duty in the U.S. Army. In addition to his work as a part time lecturer, Mr. Girard has been employed as an engineer with the Department of the Navy and a local defense contractor; and has most recently started his own consulting business.

Dr. Girard has been teaching at Penn State Altoona since August 2004. She has taught consumer behavior, marketing research, principles of marketing, contemporary american marketing, internet marketing, marketing strategy, entrepreneurial marketing, and leadership and motivation courses. Besides teaching undergraduate courses and doing academic research, Dr. Girard serves as a marketing research consultant to businesses.

Eric Granlund, instructor in engineering, currently teaches in the areas of engineering mechanics, engineering design and graphics, machine elements, computer-aided design and materials science. He is the faculty advisor for the student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the student chapter of Tau Alpha Pi Engineering Technology Honor Society. Eric received both his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and M.S. in Engineering Mechanics from the Pennsylvania State University.

Alexander Doster Hilshey, Instructor in Electrical Engineering, earned his Master's of Science in Electrical Engineering at the University of Vermont ('12) and is also an alumni of Penn State Altoona ('09). Alex's research focuses on quantifying the impacts of Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) battery charging on electrical distribution infrastructure. His research areas also include PEV charging impact mitigation, known as smart charging, and forecasting PEV charging load. His additional interests include smart grid technology, clean energy generation, numerical methods, and chaos theory. His industry experience include mechanical engineering design work at McLanahan Corporation, where he designed bulk material sampling equipment.

Deborah Kimmel Hommer joined the business faculty at Penn State Altoona in August 1998. Currently she is the Coordinator of the Business degree program, a position she has held since May 2000. Ms. Hommer has designed and taught classes in information systems, team-building, business statistics, and project management. Deborah received her B.S. in Business Management from the Pennsylvania State University and her MBA with an Information Systems focus from George Washington University.

Hai Huang, assistant professor of civil engineering, graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign with a doctorate in the area of railroad civil engineering. His research focuses on advanced computational modeling, evaluation and maintenance, and sustainable materials for railroad infrastructure. He also has research experience in fatigue and healing of materials and geosynthetic reinforcement. He has conducted his research in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has multiple publications in the Journal of Transportation Research Record as well as other engineering journals. He will make significant contributions to the railroad research and education at Penn State Altoona and will be a contributor to bring the new RTE degree on board.

After earning her bachelor of science in Agricultural Business Management from Penn State University, Ms. Kohler spent 10 years working in sales and marketing in the agricultural industry as a sales manager for a multinational corporation and a marketing consultant to small businesses. She then pursued her Masters of Education in Business and Workforce Development from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Kohler’s areas of interest include consumer behavior related to food purchases, immigrant labor working in agricultural production, land and water use policy, and alternative markets for agricultural products. She has co-authored several agricultural extension publications in the Agricultural Alternatives for Small-Scale and Part-time Farmers series. Ms. Kohler teaches introductory courses in Economics and Agricultural Business Management.

Mohammad Kurdi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, earned his doctorate from the University of Florida. Before coming to Penn State Altoona, Kurdi taught an advanced manufacturing processes class at the University of Dayton to graduate level engineers. As an NRC Fellow at the Air Force Research Laboratory, he had the opportunity to work on multiple projects in uncertainty quantification, computational methods, and control design of micro-air vehicles. He is interested in pursuing research in the manufacturing and design disciplines of mechanical engineering where he intends to utilize design optimization to coordinate different disciplines for the development of efficient products.

Jan McClure. has a B.S .and Ph.D. in Agricultural Engineering and a M.E. in Industrial Engineering. As a consultant, Jan developed proposals and software for the control of an antenna system and documented and designed the knowledge base for a cable television diagnostic program. She spent eight years as Coordinator, Expert Systems Development Group, Penn State, involved with management of cooperative project with the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. Also, she directed the development of seven expert systems, software, documentation, support, and users’ manual. Directed the beta test evaluations by the users. Currently, she is developing agricultural systems for sustainable and organics vegetable cropping systems. As an instructor, she has taught statics, dynamics, strength of materials, heat transfer, thermodynamics, and freshman engineering design. Also, she has been an Oasis Mentor (mentor to at-risk student for retention and improved study skills) and Engineering Undergraduate Advisor.

Lucas Passmore, instructor in engineering, recently completed his doctorate at Penn State in Engineering Science and Mechanics. His research interests include electronic materials, reliability, and health monitoring using dynamic data analysis. He also participates in engineering education research. In addition, Lucas has spent the last several years teaching a variety of mechanics courses to both engineering and engineering technology students.

Grant A. Risha received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Penn State in 2003. His primary research interests are reactive flows/combustion, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and propulsion. He has performed research on the enhancement of hybrid rocket solid fuel performance by introducing nano-sized energetic particles, solid propellant airbag combustion, pyrotechnic igniter characterization, solid, hybrid, and bi-propellant rocket combustion, diffusion flame combustion, aluminum/water combustion, and solid fuel pyrolysis.

Syed Rizvi, Assistant Professor of Information Science and Technologies, received his doctorate in Modeling and Simulation from the University of Bridgeport in 2010. His research interests lie at the intersection of computer networking, network security and modeling and simulation. Recently, he has been working on security issues in rogue access point detection, cognitive radios for wireless communications, and modeling and simulation of nano-networks. In the past, he has done research on the design, analysis, implementation, and comparisons of algorithms in the areas of wireless/multiuser communications, wireless sensor networks, information security, and parallel/distributed systems. He has authored and coauthored over 70 technical refereed and non-refereed papers in various conferences, international journal articles, and book chapters in research and pedagogical techniques. He is also an affiliate member of the Wireless and Mobile Communications lab at the University of Bridgeport.

Dr. Ryoo's research interests include information assurance and security, software engineering, and computer networking. He conducts extensive research in software security, network/cyber security, security management (particularly in the government sector), software architecture, architecture description languages (ADLs), object-oriented software development, formal methods, and requirements engineering. He also has substantial industry experience working with Sprint and IBM in architecting and implementing secure, high-performance software for large-scale network management systems. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Kansas in 2005.

Edwin D. Sell is a part time lecturer in engineering at Penn State Altoona. He began teaching various engineering courses following an early retirement as a supervising engineer from Pennsylvania Electric Company in 1997. Ed is a partner in Sell, Neff & Associates, a small consulting firm specializing in electrical power systems. He has also been active in training and teaching various industrial classes through Allegeny College and the Greater Altoona Career and Technology Center. Ed is a graduate of Penn State University and holds professional engineer and professional surveying licenses in the State of Pennsylvania.

Peter J Shull is a professor of engineering at Penn State Altoona. Dr. Shull has worked in the field of NDE for over 20 years while at the Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Materials Reliability Division, at The Johns Hopkins University and at The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Shull’s primary research focus is NDE applied to process control. He has authored numerous publications including the popular textbook entitled “Nondestructive Evaluation: Theory, Technique, and Applications” (Marcel Dekker, 2001), is a Fulbright Scholar (Argentina—2006), and is a member of the American Society of Nondestructive Testing, the American Society of Engineering Educators and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He received a B.S. degree (1982) in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and a M.S. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1996) degree from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Shull is also an expert in Engineering Education.

Mr. Singer came to Penn State Altoona in 2002 after a 27 year career in the Defense Intelligence business working in software and systems engineering, engineering management, programs management, and new business generation. He holds a BS and MEng in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. His interests include the smart electric grid, voice and speech recogniton, and cybersecurity.

Dr. Sherron Sparks has her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, a MS in Organizational Leadership and BS in Human Resources. She is an adjunct instructor at Penn State University, (Altoona and UP) teaching classes in Business, International Business, Psychology, Sociology and Labor and Industry. She formerly worked at Penn State University as a community liaison for the Career Services Department and as a Career Counselor. Her personal career path took her into the business realm of technology, where she served as General Manager and COO of an international technical business. In 2002 she was chosen as the only Pennsylvania, woman-run technical company, in a group of 15 companies, to accompany the Governor of Pennsylvania to Australia to study new technology trends. In 2003 she opened Sparks Business Institute, providing corporate training, coaching, counseling and business turnaround to growing and struggling businesses. Her penchant for looking at the future trends of business and industry has thrown her into the international market as well, with respect to the growing global economy and growth. Keeping abreast of current issues and staying on the cutting edge of industrial and organizational trends. In April of 2012 her latest book, Nanotechnology: Business Applications and Commercialization was released. She is currently working on a second Nanotechnology book. Sherron’s passions are business, people, and her fascination with Nanotechnology and its far reaching effects.

Sue Stevens received her B.A. degree in Telecommunications from the Pennsylvania State University in 1986. She is the Project Coordinator for the Entrepreneurship Program, Sheetz Fellows Program and Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE).

In addition to being an associate professor of economics at Penn State Altoona, Dr. Wiens-Tuers is an affiliate in the Labor Studies and Employment Relations program at University Park. She received her Ph.D. from University of California-Riverside (UCR) in 1998. Fields of concentration are labor economics, money and banking, and political economy. Publications include articles in the "Labor Studies Journal," "Labor Family News," and "Journal of Socio-Economics," "Journal of Economic Issues," "Review of Social Economy," the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology", and a chapter in a labor text. She has served as chair of the Penn State Altoona Faculty Senate 2005-2006 and is currently serving on the Penn State University Senate, is involved in assessment efforts university-wide, an active member of the Teaching and Learning Consortium at Penn State Altoona, and has served as an officer in several professional organizations.

Xuebing Yang, assistant professor of economics, recently completed his doctorate in economics at the University of Oklahoma. His research interests include international trade and industrial organization. His dissertation examines the effects and strategies of technological improvements in the open economy. His first chapter was accepted for publication by the "International Review of Economics and Finance." His teaching interests include microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics.