News & Events

Dr. James Kaklamanos, associate professor of civil engineering, published two peer-reviewed journal papers in Earthquake Spectra, which is viewed as one of the top journals in the field of earthquake engineering. The first paper develops a regional seismic velocity model for the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains based on measured shear wave velocity, sediment thickness, and surface geology.  The second paper investigates how current practices of input ground-motion selection influence site response analysis results and their variability, when considering different tectonic settings.

Sadegh Asgari, associate professor of civil engineering in the School of Science and Engineering, recently co-authored an article published in the Journal of Automation in Construction, a top-tier journal in the field of construction and civil engineering. Asgari’s study introduces a novel method for automatically recognizing activities of multiple heavy construction equipment using sound data collected by a single-channel, off-the-shelf microphone.

Mechanical Engineering Department assistant professors Anthony Di Carlo and Rickey Caldwell Jr., and former student Courtney Videchak ’19, have co-authored the paper, “Optimization of Spatially Distributed Soil Conductivities for Horizontal Ground Heat Exchanger” which has been accepted by the journal Applied Thermal Engineering.

Associate Professor James Kaklamanos was recently interviewed for a feature article on earthquakes in Turkey published on InterestingEngineering.com, a website that profiles the latest events, developments, and breakthroughs in engineering, science and technology. Kaklamanos teaches in the civil engineering department at Merrimack’s School of Science and Engineering.

Associate Professor of Civil Engineering James Kaklamanos was recently profiled in a monthly feature article by the Seismological Society of America (SSA), as part of their “At Work” column.

Dr. Craig Looney, associate professor in the department of physics, gave a presentation entitled “Making high-quality videos on an inexpensive DIY Lightboard (with technical tips relevant to all budgets)” at the Spring 2023 meeting of the New England Section of the American Physical Society.

George Heffernan, department chair and professor of philosophy, collaborated with his colleague Marco Cavallaro of the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany to collect the 14 papers from internationally renowned scholars, co-wrote the Preface, single-authored two major papers and translated several papers from German. The Existential Husserl: A Collection of Critical Essays is now in press and published by Springer.

Azam Noori, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology, presented her research at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biology (ASPB) in Portland, OR. Her presentation “Lemna minor for Silver Nanoparticles Phytoremediation” focuses on using common duckweed (Lemna minor) in removing silver nanoparticles from an aquatic environment.

Dr. James Kaklamanos, associate professor of civil engineering, was one of two earthquake engineers interviewed by Interesting Engineering on the multitude of buildings that collapsed in Turkey and Syria following the devastating earthquake.

Eight faculty members from four schools at Merrimack attended the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies conference in Amsterdam last semester. They include associate professors Luis Saenz de Viguera Erkiago and Cinzia DiGiulio of the World Languages and Cultural Studies Department, Civil Engineering Department assistant professor Cynthia Carlson, visiting associate professor Ellen Fitzpatrick, Women and Gender Studies Department professor Simona Sharoni, Graduate Education Department associate professor Susan Marine, Accounting and Finance Department associate professor Ana Silva, and Education Department assistant professor Laura Hsu.