UNT Collaborators

UNT College of Engineering
Phone: 940-565-2180
E-mail: Angus.McColl@unt.edu

Mr. Angus McColl was appointed to the US Naval Academy from California and graduated in 1982 earning a bachelor’s of science degree with a heavy emphasis on engineering and applied physics. He subsequently completed Navy Nuclear Propulsion School at Orlando FL and prototype training on the S1W (Nautilus) reactor plant at Navy Nuclear Power Training Unit, Idaho Falls ID. McColl served as division officer aboard USS ALBUQUERQUE (SSN-706), Radiological Controls Officer aboard USS PROTEUS (AS-19), Navigator & Operations Officer aboard USS SEAHORSE (SSN-669) and Executive Officer aboard USS OHIO (SSBN-726) (BLUE). His officer qualifications include Submarine Warfare Officer, Surface Warfare Officer and Nuclear Propulsion Engineer. McColl also served two staff tours, the first as Staff Submarine Officer and Flag Tactical Action Officer on the Staff of Commander, CRUISER – DESTROYER GROUP TWO / USS AMERICA Battle Group, and the second as Deputy Chief of Staff - Training and then Deputy Chief of Staff – Operations on the Staff of Commander, SUBMARINE GROUP NINE. He also served twice as US Submarine Liaison for extended at sea periods aboard Chilean Diesel-electric submarines THOMSON (SS-20) and SIMPSON (SS-21) during operations with US and Allied navies. McColl made a total of 17 deployments in submarines and surface ships over the course of a 24-year active duty Navy career, including service in the Arctic Ocean, Northern, Western and Eastern Pacific Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Caribbean Sea and Persian Gulf. He was Navigator during a 69-day under-ice deployment (ICEX 90) that included surfacing at the North Pole. He also completed multiple transits of the Suez and Panama canals. While serving in USS OHIO he played a leadership role in the successful launch of four TRIDENT I submarine launched ballistic missiles in a Fleet Commander’s Evaluation Test. McColl’s shore duty assignments included the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey CA where he earned a master’s degree in National Security Affairs, and NROTC Los Angeles Consortium Unit at Los Angeles CA where he ran NROTC programs at both the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was also assigned as a collateral duty inspector of high school Junior NROTC units for eight years (Washington and California). McColl earned a second master’s degree in education from Old Dominion University through the Troops to Teachers program. He completed student teaching in mathematics and earned a Washington State K-8 teacher certification along with various high school teaching endorsements. McColl retired from the Navy in 2006 and began a second career in higher education fundraising. He previously worked at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering (2006-2013) and University of Texas at Dallas (2013-2015), before assuming his current position at the UNT College of Engineering in early 2016. He has continued to stay actively engaged with Navy Recruiting Districts and has sent about 20 university engineering faculty to sea through the Navy’s Educators to Sea (ETS) program.

UNT College of Engineering
Phone: 940-369-8139
Email: Kathryn.Beasley@unt.edu

Ms. Kathryn Beasley has 12 years of professional experience recruiting for undergraduate and graduate programs and has been involved in outreach activities throughout this time. She currently serves as the Assistant Director of Recruitment and Admissions in the College of Engineering at the University of North Texas. As part of her role, she oversees all recruitment and outreach activities for the College of Engineering. Over the past two years, Kathryn has worked with colleagues to increase the number and quality of outreach activities in the College of Engineering. Some of these projects include working on an NSF subcontract to increase the number of women who enroll in computer science/information technology programs and implementing STEM @ the Park, an event where 6-12th grade students visit our campus and get a comprehensive view of the fields of engineering by participating in hands-on projects. Prior to coming to UNT, Kathryn was the Senior Recruiter at Tarleton State University where she recruited undergraduate students. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Communications at Tarleton State University and her Master of Arts degree in Professional and Technical Communication at the University of North Texas.

Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering (joint)
Director, Nanomaterials and Devices Laboratory 
Phone: (940) 369-7673
Email: Wonbong.Choi@unt.edu

Prof. Wonbong Choi is a tenured, full professor in the Department of Materials Science and Mechanical and Energy Engineering at University of North Texas.  Dr. Choi is conducting basic and applied research at the frontier of nanomaterials and their applications in nanoelectronics, energy storage, and bioelectronics. His passion lies in the discovery, understanding and application of new paradigms to enable the development of next generation devices and systems that can address societal needs.  Besides Academia, Dr. Choi has worked in an industrial research laboratory, SAMSUNG (SAIT), where he was a senior researcher and Project Manager and lead a team investigating carbon nanotube flat panel display technology. Dr. Choi has been awarded the prestigious Materials Research Society (MRS) Medal in 2006 and MRS Fellow as the youngest person named as a Fellow in 2009. Dr. Choi is credited to developing the single molecular DNA-sensor, high efficiency Li-ion battery based on carbon nanotubes, Li-S battery, graphene based flexible field emission display, vertical CNT-Field Effect Transistor and CNT based non-volatile memory devices. He has been involved in various cooperative projects such as dye sensitized solar cells, and Lab-on-a-chip to name a few. Dr. Choi is the author/co-author of over 80 patents, 1 book (“GRAPHENE”), 10 book chapters, over 230 publications, which includes 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and 80 conference proceedings. His research articles have been cited over 12,000 times with an H-index of 55 (Google Scholar).

Department of Chemistry
Director, Wang Research Group
Phone: (940) 369-8238 
Email: Hong.Wang@unt.edu

Prof. Hong Wang received her bachelor degree from Shandong University in 1990 and her PhD with Kevin M. Smith from UC. Davis in 2003. She conducted her postdoctoral research in James P. Collman group at Stanford University (2003–2005), and in Paul Wentworth Jr group at the Scripps Research Institute (2005–2007). In 2007, Dr. Wang started her independent career in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Miami University. In 2016, Dr. Wang joined UNT. Dr. Wang is a recipient of NSF career awards. She was recognized as Royal Society of Chemistry Emerging Investigator in 2011. She won a Theme Journal Award and a Distinguished Scholar Award (Miami University) in 2012.

Department of Physics
Director, Photonic Band-gap Materials Lab
Phone: (940) 565-4548
Email: yuankun.lin@unt.edu

Prof. Yuankun Lin received his Ph. D. in Physics from University of British Columbia, Canada, in 2000. He is now a full Professor in Physics (75%) and in Electrical Engineering (25%) at UNT. He has published over 95 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 74 conference presentations or proceedings, and one book chapter. His publications have achieved 1451 total citations, h-index of 20 and i10-index of 38 (2018 data in scholar.google.com). His research has been focusing on the laser holographic fabrication of 2D and 3D photonic crystals. These research activities have won international recognitions due to his research advances in the development of simplified optical fabrication techniques for 2D and 3D photonic crystals and their applications in sensing, solar cell and organic light emitting diode. Very recently he broadened his research interests into newly discovered areas of Transformation Optics and Gradient Index Photonic Devices. His newly discovered graded photonic super-crystals can be integrated with organic light emitting diode and a high light extraction efficiency up to 76 % can be reached (US Department of Energy has a goal of 70% in year 2020).  He has won several major research grants from NSF and Air Force including NSF NIRT program as a PI since 2006. The total amount of these grants is over $5.7 million.

Department of Physics
Director, Photonic Band-gap Materials Lab
Phone: (940) 565-4179
Email: usha.philipose@unt.edu

Prof. Usha Philipose is Associate Professor in the Department of Physics.  She received her PhD in 2006 from the University of Toronto. Her research interests are in solid state physics, specifically the growth and characterization of low-dimensional semiconductors like thin films and nanowires. The goal is to understand the fundamentals of electron, photon and phonon transport in these nanostructures.  Current research in her lab is geared towards increasing the complexity of these structures by fabricating heterostructures, engineering surface roughness and fabricating nanocomposites to study the effects of such complexities on certain functionalities such as its optoelectronic and energy conversion capabilities.  Active projects in the lab include: nanostructure based thermoelectrics, core-shell nanocomposites for sensing applications, electro-spun nano-fibers for optoelectronic applications, transition metal doped thin films and nanowires for spintronic applications, nanostructures Integrated with photonic crystal resonant structures for photodetector applications.

Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Director, The X Lab: Processing, Characterization of Structural Metallic Materials
Phone: (940) 369-5073
Email: Marcus.Young@unt.edu

Prof. Marcus L. Young is the Associate Chair for the Undergraduate Degree Program and an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of North Texas (UNT), joining the faculty following a two year position as a research metallurgist at ATI Wah Chang, a large metal supplier company. Dr. Young received a B.F.A. in Sculpture and a B.F.A. in Ceramics from UNT and was the sole proprietor of a ceramics business before returning to school, where he received a B.S. in Metallurgical and Materials Science Engineering from Colorado School of Mines and a PhD in Materials Science Engineering from Northwestern University (NU). Dr. Young’s PhD research was supported by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), where he spent a significant time working at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). Following his education, Dr. Young worked as an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-doctoral Research Fellow with the Art Institute of Chicago and NU for one year and then as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany for more than two years. At UNT, Dr. Young’s research group is focused on the development, processing, and characterization of structural metallic materials, specifically shape memory alloys, complex concentrated alloys, and strain glass alloys, and their porous and composite counterparts. In addition, Dr. Young’s research group is focused on examining modern and ancient art historical objects with the Dallas Museum of Art as well as several other local and national museums.

Department of Electrical Engineering  
Director, Reconfigurable Computing Lab
Phone: 940-369-5118
Email: gayatri.mehta@unt.edu

Prof. Gayatri Mehta is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Reconfigurable Computing Lab.  Her research interests are broadly in the areas of Electronic Design Automation, Reconfigurable Computing, Low-Power VLSI Design, System on a Chip Design, Embedded Computing, and Portable/Wearable Computing. Her research is focused on designing low power custom reconfigurable architectures and developing efficient algorithms for mapping applications onto reconfigurable architectures through crowdsourcing. One of her interactive design frameworks, UNTANGLED, designed to uncover human mapping strategies has received the People's Choice Award in the Games and Apps category of the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge conducted by the National Science Foundation and Science. She is a senior member of IEEE, and a member of IEEE computer society and ACM.

Department of Electrical Engineering
Phone: 940-891-6874
Email: Colleen.Bailey@unt.edu

Prof. Colleen Bailey is Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Prof. Colleen Bailey received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2010 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with concentrations in communication systems and control systems.  She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2012 and 2017, respectively. Colleen is currently an Assistant Professor for the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of North Texas. She is the faculty advisor for multiple student organizations including IEEE, IEEE HKN, and the Order of the Engineer. In 2020, Colleen received the IEEE R5 Outstanding Student Branch Counselor award. Her current areas of research include image processing, detection and estimation theory, big data processing, machine learning algorithm design, and robotics.

Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Phone: 940-565-2603
Email: Xiao.Li@unt.edu

Dr. Xiao Li is an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of North Texas. She received her Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences.She did postdoctoral research in Chemical & Biological Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison (2012-2013), and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at University of Chicago (2013-2015). She was also a research scientist at University of Chicago (2015-2019), and a visiting resident associate at Argonne National Laboratory (2015-2019). Her current research interests focus on the self-assembly of block copolymer, liquid crystals, colloidal particles and liquid crystal elastomer for optoelectronic, biomedical and microactuator application.

Department of Biomedical Engineering
Phone: 940-369-7223
Email: Brian.Meckes@unt.edu

Dr. Meckes obtained a obtained a B.S. in Bioengineering from Rice University (2009) and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego (2015) where he was an NIH Ruth Kirschstein Fellow. Prior to joining UNT as a faculty member, he was the Eden and Steven Romick Postdoctoral Fellow and an International Institute for Nanotechnology Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University.

His research group focuses on using nanotechnology to understand the mechanisms of disease and develop therapeutic avenues for treatment. In particular, we utilize cell-compatible nano- and micro-fabrication techniques to study how cell architecture in combination with mechanical and chemical microenviroments trigger stem cell fate decisions for osteoarthritis treatment and prevention. We also seek to develop novel peptide-based nanotherapeutics that improve specificity and expand the therapeutic window for treatment of cancer and addiction.