Jesse Hoagg, Christoph Brehm Win Excellence in Research Awards

Dr. Jesse B. Hoagg, Donald and Gertrude Lester Professor in Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Christoph Brehm, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, are two of this year's three recipients of the 2020 College of Engineering Excellence in Research Award. 

Dr. Jesse Hoagg

Over his 10 years at UK, Dr. Jesse Hoagg has established himself as a leader in the area of autonomous systems and controls by developing a well-funded and productive research group centered around controls theory with application to multi-agent autonomous systems and to human learning. His work has been supported by $7 million in funding as PI or co-PI through a diverse group of funding sources.

Since 2016, Dr. Hoagg has received 10 new grant awards as PI or co-PI with over $4.1 million in new funding during that period. Notably he has grown his program to include significant leadership on major multi-investigator efforts. He was a key team member on a $6 million NSF award ($1.4 million to UK) supporting the use of autonomous systems for atmospheric monitoring.

From his funded work, Dr. Hoagg has published 30 peer-reviewed publications in high quality journals—22 journal articles since 2016—and 83 peer-reviewed conference publications. His published work has been cited over 1,400 times and he is the lead author on a pending textbook on quadratic controls.

Dr. Hoagg has supported the research of 10 Ph.D. and eight M.S. students. His work has been recognized externally with four Best Presentation Awards at conferences on Controls. 

Dr. Christoph Brehm

Dr. Christoph Brehm’s research is in the development of new approaches and algorithms for computational fluid dynamics with an emphasis on high-speed hypersonic flows, fundamental turbulence and transition and fluid-structure interactions.

Since arriving at UK in 2016, he has developed a remarkably active research program for this point in his career. He has already received over $3.8 million in total funding, of which over $2.1 million supports work in his lab. These awards include the prestigious Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, as well as major grants as PI from NSF, NASA and the Air Force.

Separate from these monetary awards, Dr. Brehm has received grants for computational time on national supercomputers of over 350 million cpu-hours. The value of these computational awards is estimated at over $7 million.

Dr. Brehm has already graduated two M.S. students and currently advises nine Ph.D. students as well as two post-docs. Since 2016, he has published eight peer-reviewed articles in top journals in his field, with three additional papers in review.