COE Welcomes New Faculty and Administrators

New Faculty and Administrators

The College of Engineering welcomed seven new faculty and administrators during the Fall 2013/Spring 2014 academic year.


Burkhard Englert headshot
Burkhard Englert

Burkhard Englert
CECS Chair

Dr. Englert has been at CSULB since August 2003, and served as the COE’s graduate program coordinator from 2011-2013. He received his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2000, and his areas of interest include distributed computing, computer security and transportation system simulation and modeling.


Anastassios G. Chassiakos headshot
Anastassios G. Chassiakos

Anastassios G. Chassiakos
EE Chair

Dr. Chassiakos holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, and been with the College of Engineering since 1992. He served as the director of the California Pre-Doctoral Program for the Office of the CSU Chancellor from 2009-2012, and has extensive experience as a consultant for aerospace manufacturers including Rockwell International and Northrop Corporation.


Nicole Forrest Boggs headshot
Nicole Forrest Boggs

Nicole Forrest Boggs
Director of Development

Ms. Boggs comes to CSULB with over a decade of development experience. Most recently she served as Director of Development at Cal Poly Pomona where she was responsible for frontline fundraising in the College of Education and Integrative Studies, Student Affairs, University Library and Presidential Priorities. Prior to her work at Cal Poly Pomona, she was Director of Annual Giving at the University of La Verne. Nicole holds an MBA with a marketing emphasis and Bachelors in Economics.


Ted Yu headshot
Ted Yu

Ted Yu
Assistant Professor
Chemical Engineering

Dr. Yu holds a PhD in Materials Science from Caltech and has had many years of experience conducting experimental research at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. His area of interest include alternative energy applications of fuel cells, batteries, solar cells, and artificial photosynthesis.


Mehrdad Aliasgari headshot
Mehrdad Aliasgari

Mehrdad Aliasgari
Assistant Professor
Computer Science

Dr. Aliasgari holds a PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of Notre Dame, where he completed a dissertation in “Secure Computation and Outsourcing of Biometric Data.” He also received his masters degree in Computer Science and Engineering Notre Dame, and holds a bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. His research interests include computer security and applied cryptography.


Bob Minaie headshot
Bob Minaie

Bob Minaie
Boeing Endowed Professor of Manufacturing
MAE Department

Dr. Minaie holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota. His research areas include manufacturing, materials, and mechanics including the use of advanced composites, thin films, and multifunctional nanostructured materials for aerospace, energy, green manufacturing, structural health monitoring, fuel cell, and transportation applications. His research has been supported at a significant level by NASA, ONR, AFOSR, DOE, NSF, and industry. Close collaboration with industry and providing leadership for university-industry-government teams in conducting interdisciplinary and multi-investigator research have been integral parts of his activities. Prior to joining CSULB, he served on the faculty of Wichita State University.


Mahdi Yoozbashizadeh headshot
Mahdi Yoozbashizadeh

Mahdi Yoozbashizadeh
Assistant Professor
MAE Department

Dr. Mahdi Yoozbashizadeh holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering with a focus in Manufacturing Engineering from USC and has had six years of experience both as a postdoctoral fellow and research assistant conducting experimental research in the Additive Fabrication and Manufacturing Labs at USC. His research interests include powder metallurgy, 3D printing, metallic part fabrication, rapid prototyping, CAD/CAM and design of experiments.

NCWIT and Symantec Give Grants

Student Seed Fund

January 15, 2014

NCWIT’s Student Seed Fund Supports Student-led Recruitment Programs

The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) announced today the seventh round of winners of the NCWIT Student Seed Fund, sponsored by Symantec Corporation. Each winner will receive $1,000 for projects that recruit, retain, and encourage girls and women to participate in technology and computing career fields.

The NCWIT Student Seed Fund has provided $53,250 in seed funding for 80 student-run projects at universities and colleges nationwide since 2010. NCWIT Student Seed Fund projects include programming workshops, after-school programs, student mentoring, peer support, professional training, and other opportunities serving thousands of elementary, middle-school, high-school, undergraduate, and graduate students. With Symantec’s support, NCWIT was able to increase the grant awarded to recipients of the seventh round of the NCWIT Student Seed Fund awards.

… read more National Center for Women & Information Technology

Girls to learn engineering at Cal State Long Beach

2012 MDIAE group photo

By Long Beach Press-Telegram
Posted: 12/31/69, 4:00 PM PST | Updated: on 07/06/2013

LONG BEACH — A group of fifth-graders and their parents moved into a Cal State Long Beach dorm Friday to participate in the “My Daughter is an Engineer” residential program.

It’s designed as a live-and-learn experience for the 15 students and their parents to explore the realm of engineering.

The students were selected from six Long Beach Unified and two Compton Unified schools identified as having high-minority student enrollment and serving low-income families. Participating students are from Chavez and Edison elementary schools in Long Beach and Kennedy Elementary School in Compton.

… read more; Girls to learn engineering at Cal State Long Beach

SoCalGas Sponsors Student Research and Development Program

Southern California Gas Company

The Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) and the College of Engineering (COE) have launched a capstone senior project class at CSULB that is engaging interdisciplinary teams of top-achieving students in innovative, real-world research and development projects. Each participating student team works for an entire academic year on a real-world engineering, technology or business problem selected by SoCalGas.

The selection process for this program is highly competitive, with only top-achieving seniors from the Engineering, Computer Science and Business departments being considered by a selection committee comprised of representatives from SoCalGas’ Engineering, Emerging Technologies, and Human Resources departments. Though receiving guidance from CSULB faculty and senior engineers from SoCalGas, each student team is responsible for developing its own project strategy, organization, tasks and budget, and for ultimately delivering a working prototype with commercialization potential.

“All indications thus far suggest that this is a highly beneficial experience for all of the students involved,” said Parviz Yavari, professor in CSULB’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department and instructor of this new course. “Each team member is receiving vital firsthand experience in negotiating project plans, in making presentations, in adjusting to changing conditions, and in writing a final report—in short, in being a professional engineer.”

The College of Engineering is making plans to expand this program so that many more students can benefit from it. “We are hoping to offer multiple sections of a capstone senior project class that follows this innovative model,” said Forouzan Golshani, dean of the College of Engineering. “Ideally each student in our Honors program will have the opportunity to participate in a similar initiative.”

COE Opens High Performance Computing Lab

The College of Engineering has opened a  High Performance Computing (HPC) Laboratory. Provided by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base, the HPC Laboratory will enable the College’s faculty and students to bring the power of high-performance computing to bear on some of the most enduring challenges facing engineers.

Consisting of a master node and eight computer nodes with 140 cores total that can be doubled with hyper-threading, the HPC Laboratory is able to perform computations that would take a single computer weeks or even months. HPC is extremely useful to engineering in its ability to perform “multivariable assessment and optimization,” and thus to create a design that has been optimized according to a variety of variables.

Examples of the usefulness of this technology include improving the design performance of small flying vehicles (micro-UAVs), using brain signals to predict patient recovery after brain surgery, and simulating air pollution diffusion from various sources within an urban community. “The implications of high-performance computing are immense for research in biomedical, fracture mechanics, fluid dynamics, engineering systems, network and security, and anything that requires large data crunching,” said Hamid Rahai, interim associate dean of research in the COE.