BETTY BUGUSU, PH.D.
Technical Director
Prior to joining LASER PULSE, Dr. Betty Bugusu served as the Managing Director of Purdue’s International Food Technology Center housed in the Department of Food Science and the Director for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Processing and Post-Harvest Handling working in Kenya and Senegal. She also worked as a Research Scientist with the Institute of Food Technologists and as Program Associate for SUSTAIN (a non-profit organization), both based in Washington DC. Dr. Bugusu obtained her B.S. degree in Agriculture from Egerton University, Kenya and M.S. and Ph.D. in Food Science from Purdue. Her research focused on cereal chemistry.
YUEHWERN YIH, PH.D.
Director
Dr. Yuehwern Yih is the Director (previously Academic Director) of LASER PULSE Consortium and Professor of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. Her research area focuses on system engineering for developing strategies to optimize and manage complex systems/operation performance. Dr. Yih translates and implements her research work as system models, evaluation tools, designs and solutions in health systems, humanitarian relief operations, supply chains, and global development areas. Examples include an integrated nutrition support system for HIV patients in Kenya, jointly developed with AMPATH; an emergency response supply chain management system (ETRA), jointly developed with Catholic Relief Services; an integrated demand sensing health supply chain (E+TRA Health) in Uganda, joint effort with Makerere University and Management Science in Health; and spatial redesign for Kangaroo Mother Care in Malawi, joint effort with Save the Children. Dr. Yih is an IISE Fellow and ELATE Fellow.
ARVIND RAMAN, PH.D.
Director
Dr. Arvind Raman is the Robert V. Adams Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. His research focuses on exploiting nonlinear dynamics for innovations in diverse interdisciplinary areas such as nanotechnology, biomechanics and appropriate technologies for sustainable development. His work on the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has helped the scientific and industrial community recognize and exploit nonlinear effects to better and more rapidly measure properties of complex materials at the nanoscale.Via the cyberinfrastructure of nanohub his AFM simulation tools are used by thousands of researchers worldwide. He is the co-founder of the Shah Family Global Innovation Lab in the College of Engineering and the PI of LASER PULSE. Raman has mentored twenty-four PhD students, co-authored more than a hundred and forty peer-reviewed journal articles, held visiting positions at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain), University of Oxford (UK), and Technical University Darmstadt (Germany), and secured funding from the NSF, NIH, NASA, NNSA, and several national and international industrial sponsors. He is an ASME fellow, an ASME Gustus Larson Memorial Award recipient, Keeley fellow (Oxford), College of Engineering outstanding young investigator awardee, and a NSF CAREER awardee. He currently serves as the Sr. Associate Dean of the Faculty in the College of Engineering.
