Focus Areas and Interests

ABE research focus areas include:

Advanced Machinery Engineering
Animal Production Systems Engineering
Water and Environmental Stewardship Engineering
Biological and Process Engineering (includes biorenewables)
Occupational Safety Engineering

Research is being directed increasingly toward biosystems engineering and biorenewables through the use of biosensors, image analysis, biological systems modeling, and the design and control of biological systems and processes. Many research projects (e.g., biorenewables and biofuels) encompass faculty from more than one focus area.

Faculty also research in the area of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).

Advanced Machinery Engineering

Stuart J. Birrell: Precision agriculture, sensors
Joseph Chen: Lean manufacturing systems design, expert systems in manufacturing processes control
Matthew Darr: Sensors for monitoring ventilation systems
H. Mark Hanna: Sustainable agricultural systems
Shana Smith: CAD/CAM, product design, assembly/disassembly sequence planning, virtual reality, design automation
Brian L. Steward: Control and sensing for agricultural systems
Lie Tang: Agricultural automation and robotics

Animal Production Systems Engineering

Robert Burns: Animal Waste Management and Water Quality
Jay D. Harmon: Livestock production systems and air quality
Steven J. Hoff: Ventilation design, environmental control, and instrumentation
Jacek Koziel: Air quality engineering and livestock odor
Wendy J. Powers (joint with Animal Science): odor characterization and quantification, dietary manipulation of manure nutrients and odor, and influence of management systems on manure nutrients
James C. Shahan: Computer technology pertaining to engineering design, structures
Hongwei Xin: Poultry and swine housing systems, environmental physiology, air quality

Water and Environmental Stewardship Engineering

Alok Bhandari: Fate and removal of organic contaminants associated with water and soil
John A. Downing (joint with Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology): Agriculture and water quality
Thomas D. Glanville: Water quality and composting
Matthew J. Helmers: Agricultural and water resources
Amy Leigh Kaleita: Biological and natural resource engineering
Rameshwar S. Kanwar: Drainage, irrigation, water quality, and natural resource management
John Laflen: Soil erosion
Robert W. Malone (joint with USDA): Modeling the relationship between management, soils, and climate as they affect chemical transport and crop yield
Steven K. Mickelson: Water quality management and nondestructive evaluation of soil
Michelle Soupir: Fate and transport of pathogen indicators from pasturelands
U. Sunday Tim: Water quality modeling, spatial decision support systems, environmental modeling, geographic information systems, virtual reality technology, environmental forensics, precision agriculture, and bioinformatics
J. (Hans) van Leeuwen (joint with Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering): Recovery of byproducts from liquid
wastes and sludges.

Biological and Process Engineering

Robert P. Anex: Biosystems, Bio-based material assessment
Carl J. Bern: Grain and oilseed preservation and processing
Robert C. Brown: (joint with Mechanical Engineering): Biorenewable resources, especially related to the thermochemical processing of biomass into energy, fuels, and chemicals
Thomas J. Brumm: Biorenewable resources, biofuels, grain and seed quality
David Grewell: Polymer processing, biofuels
Charles R. Hurburgh, Jr.: Grain quality, marketing, distribution and quality management systems
Lawrence A. Johnson: New uses for corn and soybeans, process technology
Tae Hyun Kim: Bioconversion of lignocellulosic material into ethanol
Manjit K. Misra: Computer vision systems and seed conditioning
D. Raj Raman: Biosystems, biorenewable resources, lingocellulosic pre-treatment
Samy Sadaka: Gasification, pyrolysis, and composting
Chenxu Yu: Bionanotechnology and its application in bioengineering

Occupational Safety Engineering