Bala Ram, PhD, PE
Principal Investigator, NSF IGE
Director, NSF IGE Program
Associate Dean, College of Engineering
Professor, Industrial & Systems Engineering
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Bala Ram is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Engineering and Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at NC A&T State University. Dr. Ram has played a significant role in the establishment and implementation of the PhD program in Industrial & Systems Engineering. Dr. Ram has served as the PI for a cross-disciplinary Research Experience for Undergraduates site sponsored by NSF. He is currently the PI for an NSF project on Innovation in Graduate Education. Dr. Ram is an evaluator for the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET.

Salil Desai, PhD
Principal Investigator, NSF IGE
Director, Center of Product Design and Advanced Manufacturing
Professor, Industrial & Systems Engineering
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Desai is the University Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center of Excellence in Product Design and Advanced Manufacturing. His expertise is in the areas of smart digital manufacturing, hybrid additive, nano and bio manufacturing, multiphysics modeling, cyber-physical systems, regenerative tissue engineering, product design and realization. He holds a Ph.D. and MS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Mumbai. He is Fellow of the ASME and IISE professional societies and also an Associate Editor of IISE Transactions.

Tobin N. Walton, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator, NSF IGE
Assistant Professor
Department of Social Work and Sociology
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Walton’s research interests are in developing interdisciplinary and mixed-methods approaches to investigate, understand, and address the complex social drivers of behavior in the areas of education, environment, and human health and well-being. His work is focuses on theory, measurement, and modeling of the social psychological and cultural bases of action, behavior, and decision-making, in the areas of (1) STEM education (2) organizational and community adaptive capacity and resilience to environmental problems and climate change, and (3) food insecurity, justice, and alternative food systems.

Stephanie Teixeira-Poit, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator, NSF IGE
Associate Professor
Department of Social Work and Sociology
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Teixeira-Poit is a medical sociologist who conducts mixed-methods research projects that address health disparities through complex intervention implementation and evaluation. Her work addressed three interrelated topics on health disparities. First, she leads studies that examine the impact of developing systems of care and redesigning clinical practices on health care access and utilization, delivery and quality of care, and health outcomes. Second, she designs and evaluates interventions to attenuate the effect of upstream social determinants on access to health care and health outcomes. Third, she assesses opportunities to reduce health disparities by addressing workforce shortages and improving the capacity of the workforce to provide clinical care and conduct research to improve the lives of vulnerable populations.

Chrysafis Vogiatzis, PhD
Teaching Assistant Professor
Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chrysafis Vogiatzis is a teaching assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering from the University of Florida, as well as a Dipl. Eng. degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. His academic interests lie in network analysis and optimization, along with their vast applications in modern socio-technical, transportation and infrastructure, and biological systems. His scholar activities have been funded (as a PI and a co-PI) by the Army Research Lab and the National Science Foundation. He is a member of INFORMS, IISE, SIAM, and ASEE and is currently serving as the Vice Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee of INFORMS.

Juanda Johnson-Taylor
Co-Principal Investigator, NSF IGE
Interim Director, NCLSAMP STEM Pathways and Research Alliance
North Carolina A&T State University

Juanda Johnson-Taylor is the Interim Director of the North Carolina Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation STEM Pathways and Research Alliance (NC-LSAMP SPRA). Ms. Johnson-Taylor oversees fiscal oversight and the implementation of programmatic initiatives across eight UNC partners, with the goal of increasing retention and graduation of student populations that have been historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines and the STEM workforce.

Daniel Limbrick, PhD
Co-Investigator, NSF IGE
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Daniel Limbrick is an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T). As director of the Automated Design for Emerging Process Technologies (ADEPT) laboratory at NC A&T, Dr. Limbrick researches how to make computers more reliable and secure in harsh environments (i.e., ionizing particles, malicious fault injection) by interrogating the traditional abstraction layers of integrated circuit design (i.e., functional description, circuit design, physical design) to discover design methodologies that are more relevant to these goals. Dr. Limbrick has been awarded over $5,000,000 in research grants from the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Science and Research, Naval Warfare Surface Center, and Sandia National Laboratory. He is a Department of the Navy Distinguished Fellow, Trusted Computing Center of Excellence Board Member, Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Grace Gowdy, PhD
Co-Investigator, NSF IGE
Assistant Professor
Department of Social Work and Sociology
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Gowdy’s research interests include mentor influence on individual upward mobility, with a particular focus on college retention for at-risk students. I currently work on multiple studies examining formal and informal mentoring relationships, all surrounding if and under what conditions mentors can influence at-risk students’ chances of college retention and educational mobility.

Narayan Bhattarai, PhD
Co-Investigator, NSF IGE
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical, Biological and Bioengineering
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Narayan Bhattarai is the Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Director of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering lab. His research focuses on developing novel biomaterials including bipolymers, composites, nanofibers, nanoparticles, polymer-conjugates, etc., for various biomedical applications with a specific emphasis on tissue regeneration, wound healing and controlled drug delivery. His recent projects include liver-spheroids/organoids for drug toxicity study, bioscaffolds for healing of impaired wounds, and imaging and drug treatment to cancer cells. His research papers have been cited over 10,000 times by other researchers in scientific community. He holds a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and M.S. in Chemistry.

Sun Yi, PhD
Co-Investigator, NSF IGE
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
North Carolina A&T State University

Dr. Sun Yi has developed novel methods for analysis and control algorithms of dynamic systems. The control methods have also been applied to manufacturing though machine learning, machining process, aerospace and automotive systems. He research projects include additive manufacturing, autonomous systems, teleoperation, networked systems, and adaptive control of robot manipulators. He obtained a B.S. in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.