Jeff Santner, Ph.D.

Dr. Santner is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Cal State LA. His research is in combustion, with a focus on combustion chemistry and flame initiation/propagation. He is currently working on NOx formation, kinetic model reduction, design of optimal experiments, and extraction of reaction rates from literature experiments.

Mohsen Eshraghi, Ph.D.

Dr. Eshraghi is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Cal State LA. His research specializations are Materials Science, Manufacturing, Numerical Modeling, Lattice Boltzmann Method.

Yuqing Zhu, Ph.D.

Dr. Zhu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, California State University, Los Angeles. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests include Graph Neural Networks, Data Mining in Social and Information Networks, and Distributed Systems.

Monica Quaresma

Monica Quaresma is a Systems Engineering Manager for the Contamination Control and Survivability Test Engineering at Boeing, El Segundo. She has been a Boeing team member for almost 20 years. Her technical expertise is in on-orbit contamination analysis and has provided risk assessments, analysis, and system engineering support for ground and on-orbit contamination and Survivability Engineering for all programs (commercial and government satellite systems, The International Space Station, Commercial Crew program, to name a few). She is responsible for providing Survivability environmental test support for material and unit qualification campaigns.

Monica was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. In 2004 she obtained a Master’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California. Outside of work she enjoys time with her husband and two boys, concerts, travel, and cooking.

Bianca Valdovinos

I currently work as a Software Engineer at Raytheon Technologies. I began as an intern there in the Summer of 2019 building code that wipes the memory of classified hardware. In addition to building code, I ran signal integrity tests on this hardware. I graduated from Cal State LA in June with a degree in Electrical Engineering and a specialization in power systems. My senior design project focused on using a computer to recognize objects in images. This process of object recognition uses machine learning. This project piqued my interest in computer engineering and is the reason why I chose to pursue a position as a software engineer.

Natalia Callado

Boeing

Amy Ryan

Margaret Amy Ryan received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a B.S. in Chemistry from Metropolitan State College in Denver and an A.B. in History from the University of Chicago.  She was a research scientist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Bellevue, France, and at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now National Renewable Energy Lab) in Golden, Colorado. Her work in those labs included modification of metal oxide and semiconductor electrodes for photoelectrochemical energy conversion, photoelectrochemical processing of solids, and photochemistry.

Dr. Ryan worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1989 to 2011. Her work at JPL concentrated on two primary areas of research:  (a) development of chemical sensors and devices for air quality monitoring in inhabited spacecraft and on planetary surfaces, including the JPL Electronic Nose, silicon carbide hydrocarbon sensors, and colorimetric sensors for ozone and other oxidants; and (b) investigations of metals and metal alloys for use in high temperature energy conversion devices for spacecraft, including the Alkali Metal Thermal to Electric Converter (AMTEC) and thermoelectric devices.  She was the Principal Investigator on the NASA Electronic Nose Technology Development Task, which culminated in the use of the JPL Electronic Nose in a six month experiment to monitor breathing air the International Space Station.

After leaving JPL, Dr. Ryan worked at the US Department of Energy in the Solar Photochemistry Program in Basic Energy Sciences. She is now retired.