News & Events

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.

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.

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.

The Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section (BSCES) honoredassociate professor of civil engineering James Kaklamanoswith the College Education Awardrecognizing his exceptional teaching and mentorship. The BSCES also named professor emeritus David “Doc” Westerling recipient of the Horne/Gaynor Award for his philanthropic activities in the public interest.

Dr. Brandi Baldock and co-authors Dr. Anthony Fernandez, Dr. Jimmy Franco, Dr. Brian Provencher and Dr. Mark McCoy from Merrimack’s department of chemistry & biochemistry recently published an article in the Journal of Chemical Education entitled “Overcoming the Challenges of Remote Instruction: Using Mobile Technology to Promote Active Learning.”

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.

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.

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.

Janine LeBlanc-Straceski, associate professor and chair of biology, published a paper, “A Conserved Role of the Unconventional Myosin 1d in Laterality Determination,” in the March 2018 issue of Current Biology. The paper was an international collaboration with colleagues in Germany and France and the culmination of many years of work with LeBlanc-Straceski’s students.