Access to safe drinking water depends not only on infrastructure, but on the people who operate and maintain it. At the University of Kentucky, Diana Byrne, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, is addressing long-standing challenges facing small water utilities. Byrne received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award with $547,471 over five years for her work.
Last month, 40 University of Kentucky Department of Mining Engineering students attended MINEXCHANGE 2026, the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME) Annual Conference & Expo in Salt Lake City, Utah. UK mining engineering faculty and students also presented 27 papers.
As self-driving vehicles and drones become more common, a University of Kentucky researcher is working to ensure these technologies can communicate and coordinate reliably in real time. Yang Xiao, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award with $534,264 over five years for his work.
Martha Grady, Ph.D., a Lighthouse Beacon Foundation Scholar and an associate department chair in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is leading a multidisciplinary team to investigate how 3D-printed titanium can be engineered to resist harmful bacteria.
Kelly G. Pennell, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and director of engineering research endowments in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, has been named editor-in-chief of Reviews on Environmental Health.
University of Kentucky researchers — along with collaborators from across the United States — gathered at Buckhorn School in Perry County last month to work with high school students on a water-testing device developed at UK. The ESCAPE research is part of the NSF’s Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Preparation program. Berry is principal investigator of the nearly $18 million NSF award, shared by the four institutions.
Kelly G. Pennell, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and director of the UK Superfund Research Center, has been named the inaugural director of engineering research endowments in the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering.
Daykin Schnell, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mining Engineering, recently finished in the top three of the Pittsburgh Coal Mining Institute of America and Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME), Pittsburgh Section's Short Presentation Contest for his presentation, "Full-scale and small-scale modeling and testing of underground methane explosions."
UK alumnus Eric Wooldridge ‘01, ‘19 ENG uses a little concrete, a little technology and a lot of ingenuity as he constructs houses for Kentuckians that can take a real wallop.
In the final Q&A in this year’s series, UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering's Guoqiang Yu, Ph.D., the Jack and Linda Gill professor in the F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering, describes his work developing low-cost optical imaging technologies for noninvasive monitoring of the health and function of tissues and organs.
