March 2025

Maseeh College Transfer Day hosted prospective transfer students from local community colleges for degree program presentations, lab tours and demonstrations, and a resource fair including student organizations, cultural and support centers, internship and career services, and on-the-spot academic advising! Thanks to the hard working team, it was a rousing success with several students expressing excitement about coming to PSU.

During the recent ECE PhD Day, doctoral candidates shared their theses on posters and offered “3 Minute Thesis” presentations. The event also featured department chair Martin Siderius, opening remarks from Dean Joseph Bull and Antonie Jetter (Associate Dean for Research, ETM) as the keynote speaker.

For Women's History Month, Tong Zhang (Assistant Dean for Inclusive Innovation) organized the stellar Marching Forth: Celebration of Women in Technology. Maseeh partnered with the Center for Women's Leadership on this event showcasing some of our amazing alumni and faculty of the college. Speakers shared their journeys in tech-related fields, their current work, and what lies ahead.

Tugrul Daim (ETM) joined the panel on Cybersecurity at the annual conference of Special Districts Association of Oregon. Learn more about the event on LinkedIn.
PhD student Natalie Violetta Frank (MME) was Maseeh's pick for a future woman of influence. Along with other representatives of PSU, she was invited to sit at President Ann Cudd's table for the 2025 Women of Influence Awards ceremony in Portland. Read more about all of the inspiring PSU's student of influence.

Commencement is somehow less than 100 days away. Maseeh College's ceremony will be on Friday, June 13th from 5-7pm at Viking Pavilion. Look for an email from Dean Bull this week with an RSVP form and details for how faculty and staff can make this a more enjoyable and personal graduation experience for our students. We've also shared requests from University Communications for outstanding graduating students to feature, as well as this nomination form for student speakers for our ceremony.
Maseeh College has dedicated spaces for prayer that are open until the conclusion of Ramadan. Find out about the spaces and availability here.
PSU has made the decision to end its joint educational programs with three Chinese universities, NJUPT, CCUT, and JLJU. University leadership has determined that the structure of these programs is no longer sustainable given changes in the geopolitical landscape since that time, as well as the increasing complexity of federal compliance obligations, gaps in PSU infrastructure, and limited institutional resources. This process will involve a teach out winding the programs down over the next several years. While these are university-wide programs, the significant work of Maseeh College faculty, staff and administrative leadership in developing and sustaining these successful programs is much appreciated. Maseeh College continues to value and appreciate our international students, and we recognize the positive impacts that their presence on campus has for all students. The President and Provost have affirmed that PSU will not shy away from its commitment to international education, and are currently working with the Office of Global Engagement and Innovation on plans for establishing a strong administrative foundation and identifying new opportunities to support our international students and faculty.

Ilke Celik (MME) was awarded $315,000 from Georgia Institute of Technology/NSF for "Understanding Chemical and Mechanical Interactions and Their Enviro-Economic Implications in the Recovery, Reuse, and Recycling of Halide Perovskite Solar Cells."
Peyman Abbaszadeh (CEE) was awarded $87,080 from OSU/DOI USGS for "Exploring the Benefits to Modeling of the USGS NSGWOS Streamflow Observations."
Banafsheh Rekabdar (CS) was awarded $8,777 from Auburn University/ONR for "Double-scale FEM-DEM Modeling of Sea Ice Floes at M-KM Scales: Model Initialization and Development."
Andrew Greenberg (CE/PSAS) was awarded $550,000 from AscendArc/DOD US Air Force Research Laboratory for "Rapid, Scalable Geosynchronous Communications."
Scott Wells (CEE) was awarded $65,000 from Anchor QEA/State of Washington, Recreation and Conservation Office for "Chehalis Basin Strategy Development."

Sirisha Kothuri (CEE) was awarded $95,000 from ODOT for "Evaluation of the Relationship Between Near Misses and Crash Outcomes at Intersections in Oregon."
James F Pankow (CEE) was awarded $12,600 from Lower Columbia Fish Enhancement Group for "Camp Singing Wind."
Samantha Hartzell (CEE) was awarded $120,000 from The United States-Israel Binational Agricultural Research & Development Fund (BARD) for "Understanding the Drivers of Hydraulic Redistribution Under Salt Stress."
David Burnett (ECE) was awarded $116,166 by Sandia National Laboratories/DOE for "Photonics-Enabled Energy Scaling for "Tera-Scale Focal Plane Arrays."
James McNames (ECE) was awarded $2,500 from Oregon State University/NASA for "OreSat Processor Upgrade: Making Space More Programmable."

PSU students, faculty, and staff are invited to an Immigration Information Forum March 19th (hybrid option available). Learn about recent developments regarding Executive Orders, what to do if you encounter ICE, how to create a preparedness plan for affected individuals in your family and/or community, State Sanctuary Promise law, and University policies.
China update--waiting for Joe/Provost's language
Hosted by PSU's Office of Academic Innovation, the Faculty Book Club: Exploring Equity in STEM Education will feature Dr. Ebony McGee’s book Black, Brown, and Bruised: How Racialized STEM Education Stifles Innovation. McGee was our Inclusive Teaching & Mentoring Symposium speaker in Fall 2024. RSVP for the event here.
An upcoming Cultural Awareness Training is a great resource for faculty and staff around supporting Asian American & Pacific Islander students. The following training was made possible by PSU's AANAPISI grant. There are three sessions, beginning on April 4th: get more information and RSVP here. A working group found that PSU Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian students had the highest rates of Ds and Fs and the lowest graduation rate of any demographic group, and these trainings could work toward improving the statistics.

Snacks & Solutions: Equitable Selections on March 20th will focus on developing equitable selection processes for PhD students, including rubrics. However, the creation of these tools may be more broadly applicable in uses such as scholarship selection, hiring, and others. Hosted in the CS Fishbowl: sign up here.
Join in supporting PSU students on Friday, March 28 as they compete in this year’s Cleantech Challenge and Everyday Entrepreneur Program. There will be live student pitches, an exhibition of the Cleantech prototypes and a catered reception. Register to attend.
Dean Joseph Bull will be holding a virtual Listening Session on April 9th from 1-2 pm. Among the topics to be addressed will be meeting the challenges of this time, elevating the interests and voices of Maseeh students, and other concerns. While this session is primarily geared toward students, staff and faculty are welcome to attend. Visit pdx.zoom.us/j/83456528627 to join.
AISES North Region Conference is happening April 11th-13th @ PSU's Native American Student and Community Center (NASCC). Visit aises.org/regions/#conferences to register.
During PSU's Research Week, Maseeh College is hosting an Open House on May 6th from 5-7 pm. Prospective students can visit, collect some swag, take a self-guided tour of our cutting-edge research labs, listen to Ignite-style talks from award winning faculty, and visit poster presentations of student-led research projects. We hope to see you there. We also have an exciting related project in the works that we will share details about soon: here's a clue.

Learn how Maseeh College researchers are helping with disaster preparedness and regional resilience. Yumei Wang (CEE, Senior Advisor on Infrastructure Resilience and Risk), Diane Moug (CEE), CEE doctoral candidate Kayla Sorenson, Arash Khosravifar (CEE), Franz Rad (Emeritus CEE), and Peter Dusicka (CEE Chair) are among others working to prepare the region for an inevitable Subduction Zone Earthquake.
Delve into some the many research projects happening around campus in this article about PSU's designation as an urban research institution, in which the work of David Burnett (ECE) and Antonie Jetter (Associate Dean for Research, ETM) and the Powerize project is highlighted.
Read the PSU Blog piece about the students of influence, including our doctoral candidate, Natalie Violetta Frank (MME).

If you have any faculty or staff news for the next Faculty Staff Bulletin or suggestions, add them to this document.

If you have any student news or content for the next @MaseehCollege newsletter, share it via email.

Manage your preferences | Opt Out using TrueRemove™
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails.
View this email online.

P.O. Box 751 | Portland, OR 97207 US

This email was sent to .
To continue receiving our emails, add us to your address book.

Subscribe to our email list.