BIE Department Faculty

	David W. Britt Email: dbritt@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2158 Office: ENGR 402K View Personal Page View Resume (ABET Format)	David Britt is an Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering. His research interests focus on surface chemistry, interfacial water structure (hydration layers) and associated surface potential of membranes and biomaterials as related to protein absorption and biofilm formation. Recent projects include: Development of functionalized membranes to recognize and report target molecule binding and advanced scanning probe methods to map membrane electric surface potential on nanometer size scales with the long-term goal of characterizing cell membrane domains (lipid rafts) having putative cell-signaling roles.
	Conly Hansen Email: chansen@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2188 Office: NFS 242 View Personal Page View Resume (ABET Format)	Conly Hansen is a Professor and Director of the Center of Excellence for Profitable Uses of Agricultural Byproducts in the College of Engineering at Utah State University. He teaches courses in fundamentals of food processing and an advanced course in food engineering. His research centers on food processing equipment and processes, particularly processes that deal with agricultural waste management. He has two key inventions: high pressure injection (HPI) and the induced blanket reactor (IBR). Dr. Hansen has co-authored two books and visited 11 foreign countries for professionally related work. He was Chair of the Food and Process Engineering Institute in 1997-98.
	Thomas B. Hardy Email: hardy@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2824 Office: UWRL 125 and ENGR 402M View Personal Page	Thomas Hardy is a Professor with joint appointments in the Departments of Biological and Irrigation and Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as the Utah Water Research Laboratory. He is also the Associate Director of the Utah Water Research Laboratory. He has accumulated extensive research and consulting experience involving the development and testing of multidisciplinary approaches to instream flow modeling techniques, impact assessments of altered habitat and flow regimes on aquatic species and riparian communities, and the application and testing of remote sensing systems with linkages to GIS modeling in natural resource applications.
	Robert W. Hill Email: bobh@ext.usu.edu Phone: 797-2791 Office: ENGR 405C View Resume (ABET Format)	Robert Hill is a Professor in the Biological and Irrigation Engineering Department and USU Extension Irrigation Specialist for Utah. In addition to Extension responsibilities, he is currently conducting field plot pasture water use and yield research in Northern Utah. He is an author of numerous Extension fact sheets and over 90 crop water use and irrigation-related technical publications. He is interested in irrigation delivery and conveyance systems operation; hydrologic, crop yield and irrigation scheduling models; and river basin and state-wide crop water requirements. He has provided nearly 30 technical assistance TDYs in 14 countries, most recently in the Dominican Republic, Egypt, and Armenia. He consults as an expert witness in Western US water rights and irrigation-related cases.
	Sinisha Ivans Email: sinisha@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-1142 Office: ENGR 402M	Sinisha Ivans is a Research Assistant Professor in the department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering. His current research interests include comparison and evaluation of micrometeorological data collected with a variety of weather stations and comparison of these data to reference ET computations using the Penman-Monteith Model. Other areas of interests are open-channel hydraulic modeling, and software development for irrigation and drainage applications.
	Joan E. McLean Email: jmcle@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-3199 Office: UWRL 315/ENGR 402S View Personal Page	Joan McLean is a Research Associate Professor in Biological and Irrigation Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and at the Utah Water Research Laboratory. Her research interests have focused on the fate and behavior of chemical pollutants in the soil environment, with emphasis on heavy metals, pesticides, and chlorinated solvents. Current research areas include the development of bacterial biosensors for determining bio-available metals in soil and water, evaluating microbial reduction of iron containing minerals in regulating TCE dechlorination, and phytoremediation of metal contaminated soils.
	Gary P. Merkley Email: merkley@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-1139 Office: ENGR 402H View Personal Page View Resume (ABET Format)	Gary Merkley is an Associate Professor of Biological and Irrigation Engineering. His research interests have focused on calibration of open-channel structures for flow measurement, mathematical models of open-channel hydraulics, irrigation system operation and maintenance, irrigation management transfer, and surface irrigation management. Recent projects have included: determination of surface velocity coefficients for the float method, non-hydrostatic flow conditions in Cutthroat flumes, mathematical modeling of unsteady hydraulics in branching canal systems, and management of fertilizer application through furrow irrigation.
	Christopher M. U. Neale Email: cneale@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-3689 Office: ENGR 402J View Resume (ABET Format)	Christopher Neale is a Professor of Biological and Irrigation Engineering and Director of the Remote Sensing Services Laboratory. His research interests are in developing remote sensing applications in hydrology, irrigated agriculture, and for monitoring natural resources. He has developed a low-cost airborne remote sensing system that has been recently used to map spatially distributed energy balance terms and evapotranspiration of riparian and agricultural vegetation. His recent projects include the mapping and monitoring of all irrigated agriculture in the Dominican Republic using aerial photography and remote sensing, developing a cadastre of all irrigation water users in a GIS environment.
	Richard C. Peralta Email: peralta@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2786 Office: ENGR 405B View Personal Page View Resume (ABET Format)	Richard Peralta is a Professor of Biological and Irrigation Engineering and Director of the Utah State Research Foundation’s Water Dynamics Laboratory. He is an expert at using formal mathematical optimization to solve water and environmental management problems. He has led development of deterministic and stochastic simulation / optimization (S/O) models for a wide range of physical problems. Selected optimization examples include: detailed vadose zone contaminant transport control; dynamic stream-acquifer conjunctive use; large-scale long-term sustained yield conjuctive water resources planning; and groundwater contamination remediation by pump-and-treat and enhanced bioremediation. Many of his developed optimal designs have been constructed, all operating successfully.
	Judith L. Sims Email: jlsims@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-3230 Office: UWRL 243/ENGR 402R View Personal Page	Judy Sims is a Research Associate Professor affiliated with the Department of Biological and Irrigation Engineering and the Utah Water Research laboratory. Her area of interest is in soil-based waste treatment, including remediation of soils contaminated with hazardous wastes as well as land treatment systems for wastewater. She is currently serving as coordinator of the Utah On-Site Wastewater Treatment Training Program and is overseeing training requirements for the State of Utah Department of Environmental Quality certification program for on-site wastewater professionals.
	Ronald C. Sims Email: rcsims@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-3156 Office: ENGR 402G View Personal Page View Resume (ABET Format)	Ronald Sims is Professor and Head of the Biological and Irrigation Engineering Department. Dr. Sims teaches graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in biochemical engineering and hazardous waste management. His research has been published in over 55 refereed journal publications, and in 12 chapters in books. He has been substantially involved in the US EPA programs in Superfund and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act for approximately 20 years. Dr. Sims is recipient of the Utah Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology, Union Carbide Corporation recognition of research excellence, and is co-chair of the Landfarming Panel for the Biannual International Conference on In Situ and On-Site Bioremediation.
	Darwin L. Sorensen Email: dsore@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-3207 Office: UWRL 303/ENGR 402T View Personal Page	Darwin Sorensen is a Research Professor of Biological and Irrigation Engineering and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research interests have focused on the microbial ecology of biodegradation and bioremediation. Recent projects have included: biodegradation of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in land-based treatment systems, reductive dehalogenation of trichloroethene in contaminated aquifers, source water protection assessments, and nitrate contamination susceptibility assessments for shallow aquifers.
	Timothy A. Taylor Email: ttaylor@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2241 Office: ENGR 402L View Resume (ABET Format)	Timothy Taylor is a Principal Lecturer of Biological Engineering. His recent research has focused on cellular physical property changes to plant cells grown in suspension culture with processing. He teaches classes in the areas of engineering qualification of biological processes and biological engineering design.
	Wynn Walker Email: wynnwalk@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2788 Office: ENGR 413B View Resume (ABET Format)	Wynn Walker is a Professor of Biological and Irrigation Engineering and Associate Dean for the College of Engineering. His specializations include the design, simulation, and evaluation of surface irrigation systems as well as introduction of computer-oriented training programs to irrigation agencies and projects in the third world. He has developed a comprehensive software package for optimizing surface irrigation management which is being produced for the National Engineering Handbook by the US Department of Agriculture. He has directed international projects in Egypt, Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador, El Salvador, India, and the Dominican Republic.
	L. Humberto Yap-Salinas Email: hyaps@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2801 Office: ENGR 405E View Resume (ABET Format)	Humberto Yap-Salinas is a Research Professor of Biological and Irrigation Engineering and Director of the International Irrigation Center. His area of work involves the organization and direction of short-term training courses for international irrigation professionals at sites in the US and overseas. He is also involved in proposals and negotiation for, and implementation of, long-term development projects in developing countries. He has been Team Leader/Chief-of-Party for long-term USU projects in the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, and does consulting work and seminars throughout Latin America and Brazil. His work focuses on irrigation system management including institutional innovation; irrigation system management transfer to farmers; agricultural product marketing; national water policies; design, development, and evaluation of irrigation and drainage systems; rehabilitation of irrigation systems through drainage and salinity control; and other nonstructural and structural aspects of irrigation development.
	Anhong Zhou Email: azhou@cc.usu.edu Phone: 797-2863 Office: ENGR 402N	Anhong Zhou is an assistant professor of Biological Engineering. His research interests focus on the development of electrochemical biosensors and their applications in environmental monitoring, biomedical analysis, and food safety, with an emphasis on the use of biomolecular assembly of nanostructured materials. He is also interested in the design and fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (Bio-MEMS) and applying these systems in the investigation of cell adhesion behaviors of cardiovascular and nerve cell on structurally defined substrate.

BIE Department Staff

	Linda John Email: linda@engineering.usu.edu Phone:797-1181 Office: ENGR 402D
	Kelly Mckee Email: kmckee@cc.usu.edu Phone:797-2802 Office: ENGR 405D
	Jed Moss Email: jmoss@cc.usu.edu Phone:797-3549 Office: ENGR 402A
	Rebeca V. Olsen Email: rebeca@cc.usu.edu Phone:797-2785 Office: ENGR 402F
	Justin Searle Email: jnsearle@cc.usu.edu Phone:797-0212 Office: ENGR 402
	Miran Seo Email: miran@cc.usu.edu Phone:797-0212 Office: 402