Aerospace Engineering Seminar Series: Erika Alvarez "From Theory to Practice: My Journey from PSU Aero to Rocket Science & Lunar Exploration Executive"

Thursday, February 19, 2026; 3:00pm-4:00pm
028 ECoRE
Speaker: Erika Alvarez from NASA Space Systems Department Deputy Director

Abstract: After more than 55 years since humankind’s first landing on the Moon, NASA sets its sights on going back to the Moon. This time, the plan is to establish a lunar base and stay. But behind the bold new missions to the Moon and Mars, every engineer, technician, scientists, mission planner and manager started as a student. This seminar discusses the foundational theories learned at Penn State University and how that prepared one student to pursue a long career in rocket science, systems integration of lunar exploration missions and eventually an executive manager of a large and diverse engineering organization. This talk will touch on the upcoming Artemis Missions and applications of technical and leadership lessons learned as a Penn State Aero Student.

Speaker Bio: Erika Alvarez is the Deputy Directory of the Space Systems Department in the Engineering Directorate at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Mrs. Alvarez previously served as the Moon to Mars Systems Engineering and Integration Director for Strategy at NASA Headquarters. She began her career at NASA MSFC, in 2004 as a turbopump engineer. Today, Alvarez leads the design, development, testing, and delivery of systems for human spaceflight programs, science investigations, and exploration initiatives. She oversees an annual budget of ~$70M and manages 600+ employees. During her previous role as the Artemis SE&I Manager she entered the Senior Executive Service and integrated across six major lunar programs. Alvarez holds an nundergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from Penn State University. Honors include two NASA Exceptional Service Medals and a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal.

Hosted by: Jessica Chhan,  jmc7050@psu.edu

The Science of Information-Seeking Intelligence

Monday, February 16, 2026; 10:00AM
W375 Westgate Building
Speaker: Dr. Bowen Jin from University of Illi

Bowen Jin is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advised by Prof. Jiawei Han. His research focuses on the science of information-seeking intelligence, developing agentic systems that can search, reason, and act over large-scale, heterogeneous data by integrating foundation models, information retrieval, and reinforcement learning. Bowen has published extensively in top venues including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, ACL, SIGIR, and WWW, many of which are widely recognized. His research has been adopted in both academia and industry, including deployments at Google Cloud and widespread open-source use. He has received several honors, including the Apple PhD Fellowship, the Yunni & Maxine Pao Memorial Fellowship and NeurIPs top reviewer award.

Hosted by: Emmalia Lutz,  exr123@psu.edu

Causal AI for Transferable, Interpretable, and Controllable Machine Learning

Thursday, February 19, 2026; 10:00AM
W375 Westgate Building
Speaker: Dr. Lingjing Kong from Carnegie Mellon University

BIOGRAPHY

Lingjing Kong is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on Causal AI for transferable, interpretable, and controllable systems, with an emphasis on understanding and exploiting the structure of real-world data to make foundation models actionable and more reliable. He develops identification principles and scalable algorithms for learning unified models from heterogeneous data, uncovering hierarchical concept structures in unstructured data (e.g., images and text), and generalizing beyond training support through compositionality and extrapolation. His work has appeared in top ML venues including ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR, ICLR, and EMNLP, and has been prototyped and applied in industry through research internships (including Amazon).

Hosted by: Emmalia Lutz,  exr123@psu.edu

Walking and swimming and flying, oh my: the multimodal biomechanics and fluid dynamics of freshwater insects

Wednesday, February 18, 2026; 121 Earth & Engineering Science Building
3:35-4:25 p.m.
Speaker: Margaret Byron from Mechanical Engineering

Many animals, including humans, can transition between multiple modes of locomotion between diverse environments. Bimodality is common, but trimodality—that is, the ability to successfully navigate between aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial environments—is relatively rare. Multimodality is also challenging to achieve in engineered devices, vehicles, and robots—however, several animals are capable of regularly traversing these environmental boundaries. In this talk, we will outline several of the general adaptations that living organisms use to locomote between land, air, and water. We will then focus on recent research in the Environmental and Biological Fluid Mechanics Laboratory which focus on the biomechanics of aquatic insects, many of which are capable of walking, swimming, and flying within the same life stage. These insects exhibit hybrid walking-swimming gaits when transitioning from land to shallow water; they also leverage surface tension, buoyancy, fluid drag, and aerodynamic forces to take off into flight directly from the water surface. They also display underwater agility, using their legs as paddles to propel themselves rapidly as they seek prey and/or escape from predators. Interesting morphological features enabling these transitions include superhydrophobic wings and hemelytra, and dense setae lining the metathoracic legs which create shape-morphing appendages for efficient swimming. We will present data from all three locomotor modes and discuss their implications for both fundamental biology and ecology as well as bioinspired engineering and technology development.

Bio: Dr. Margaret L. Byron is currently the Martin W. Trethewey Early Career Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University, and is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the American Chemical Society Doctoral New Investigator Award. She earned her B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2010 and her MS/PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California Berkeley in 2012/2015. She works at the interface of biology, physics, and engineering, with interests including the fluid dynamics of animal locomotion and the transport of irregularly shaped inertial particles in turbulent flows (including sediment, aggregates, and microplastics)

Hosted by: Lana Fulton,  lub18@psu.edu

Aerospace Engineering Seminar Series: Chloe Johnson

Thursday, February 26, 2026; 3:00pm-4:00pm
028 ECoRE
Speaker: Chloe Johnson from University of Maryland

Hosted by: Jessica Chhan,  jmc7050@psu.edu

Locating Refueling Stations for Alternative-Fuel Vehicles in a Multi-Class Vehicle Transportation Network and Its Impact on the Environment

Wednesday, February 25, 2026; 121 Earth & Engineering Science Building
3:35-4:25 p.m.
Speaker: Jose Ventura from Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The existing literature regarding the location of alternative fuel (AF) refueling stations in transportation networks generally assumes that all vehicles are capable of traveling the same driving range and have similar levels of fuel in their tanks at the moment they enter the network and when they exist it. In this research, we relax these assumptions and introduce a multi-class vehicle transportation network in which vehicles have different driving ranges and fuel tank levels at their origins and destinations. A 0-1 linear programming model is proposed for locating a given number of refueling stations that maximize the total traffic flow covered (in round trips per time unit) by the stations on the network. Through numerical experiments with recent medium- and heavy-duty truck traffic data in the Pennsylvania Turnpike, we identify the optimal sets of refueling stations for liquified natural gas (LNG) trucks considering multiple truck classes with different driving ranges and fuel tank levels at origins and destinations. Moreover, we discuss the impact of refueling station construction cost on annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and social cost of carbon (SCC) savings.

Dr. Jose Ventura is a Distinguished Professor of Industrial Engineering at Penn State. He holds a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Polytechnic Univ. of Catalonia (Spain), and MEng and PhD degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Univ. of Florida. His research interest focuses on supply chain management, with a varying emphasis that includes supplier selection, auctions and price negotiation strategies for procurement, inventory coordination, and transportation. He is also interested in traffic network equilibrium, energy transport logistics, and energy policy. Ventura has published over 130 archival journal papers. His research has garnered funding from federal and state agencies, such as NSF, DARPA-TRP, the Pentagon, and PA Turnpike Commission, and industry, such as GE and McDonnell Douglas. His research has been recognized by numerous awards, including the 2017 IISE David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award, the 1990 NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the 1988 IISE Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Hosted by: Lana Fulton,  lub18@psu.edu

Aerospace Engineering Seminar Series: Aaron Johnson

Thursday, March 5, 2026; 3:00pm-4:00pm
028 ECoRE
Speaker: Aaron Johnson from University of Michigan

Hosted by: Jessica Chhan,  jmc7050@psu.edu

Waste to Resource: Sustainable Plastic Management for a Circular Global Economy

Wednesday, March 4, 2026; 121 Earth & Engineering Science Building
335-425PM
Speaker: Hilal Ezgi Toramann from Energy, Mineral and Chemical Engineering PSU

Abstract:

About 60% of all plastics ever made are currently in waste sites, resulting in a yearly loss of $80-120 billion USD. Plastic production, accounting for 6% of global oil use, is projected to rise to 20% by 2050. Unique conditions in landfills and the natural environment expose plastic waste to factors like high salinity, varied temperatures, and microbial breakdown which can lead to the formation of microplastics. My lab leverages expertise in catalysis and reaction engineering along with advanced separation techniques such as two-dimensional gas chromatography and artificial intelligence to study the fundamental chemistry behind plastic recycling technologies. Accurate product characterization is essential to develop kinetic models for both catalytic and non-catalytic pathways. By leveraging the advanced separation capabilities of GC×GC, this talk highlights its critical role in resolving complex pyrolysis products and elucidating reaction mechanisms. These insights enable resilient plastic-recycling strategies by deepening our understanding of pyrolysis chemistry, ensuring process adaptability, and reinforcing the foundations of a strong circular economy.

Bio:

Hilal Ezgi Toraman leads an interdisciplinary research program at Penn State focused on sustainable reaction engineering and catalysis for the valorization of non-traditional carbon feedstocks, particularly plastic waste. Her group integrates advanced pyrolysis experimentation, GC×GC-based analytics, and kinetic modeling to develop and optimize scalable chemical recycling technologies. She leads multi-institutional projects on mixed plastic pyrolysis and catalytic upgrading, where her group contributes intrinsic kinetic studies, GC×GC method development, and data management and analysis infrastructure to support process design and evaluation. Toraman has received both national and international recognition, including the C&EN Talented 12, AIChE CRE Pioneers in Catalysis and Reaction Engineering, and ACS Energy & Fuels Rising Star. She has held leadership roles as Director of AIChE's Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division and president of the Pittsburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society. Her honors include the Virginia S. and Philip L. Walker Jr. Faculty Fellowship and the Wilson Fellowship. Before joining the Penn State faculty, Toraman was a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Delaware Energy Institute at the University of Delaware. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Middle East Technical University, Türkiye , and her Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from Ghent University, Belgium.

Hosted by: Lana Fulton,  lub18@psu.edu