Principle Investigator
Dr. Diana Bairaktarova
Diana Bairaktarova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech (VT), an Affiliate faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and faculty in the Human-centered Design Program also at VT. She earned her BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria, an MBA from Hamline School of Business in St. Paul Minnesota and PhD degree in Engineering Education from Purdue University. She has over fifteen years of experience working as a Design and Manufacturing Engineer. Before joining Virginia Tech, Diana started her academic career as a Professor of Practice in the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at University of Oklahoma. Her current research projects investigate how mechanical aptitude and spatial ability, interest, and manipulation of physical and virtual objects influence learning and performance in engineering. By providing applications of real-world engineering tasks in the exploration of new designs that stimulate creativity and visual reasoning, Dr. Bairaktarova aims to prepare her students with innovative thinking, helping them to face rapidly changing technologies.
Current Members
Talha Bin Asad
Talha Bin Asad is a first year PhD student in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He completed his BS in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan, and his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China. As a research assistant in the Robotics and Automation Lab, he discovered an aptitude for mechanical design, built a one-handed, 6-axis robot joystick controller, and published about it.
Talha now hopes to continue his previous research in mechanical engineering while addressing the biggest problems in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He presented his paper about new engineering pedagogical approaches at the SEFI Annual Conference in 2022. His eventual goal is to address the ever-growing need of a better education system that can address the requirements of industry and let the transition of fresh engineering graduates smooth as they start their first full-time engineering roles in industry.
Mohammed El Kihal
Mohammed El Kihal is a PhD student in Engineering Education. He received his BSGE degree from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco in 2017. Mohammed spent one year doing research at Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan working on semi-autonomous Telepresence Robots. He also spent two years at Tsinghua University in China working with Paralympic athletes to improve their performance. Mohammed served as an Adjunct Faculty member for one year at Al Akhawayn University before he joined the Mechanical Engineering department at Virginia Tech in Fall 2021 to research tremor suppressing exoskeletons for his Masters degree.
For his PhD, Mohammed seeks to explore ways to improve students’ spatial recognition skills throughout their engineering career.
Andres Nieto-Leal
Andrés is currently pursuing a PhD in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. After some years of experience in higher education, he developed an interest in the field of engineering education research. Thereby, in addition to his research in geotechnical engineering, he is also focused on curriculum development, innovative pedagogical practices, student motivation and cognition, and addressing the disconnect between classroom instruction and real-engineering practice. As part of his current research with Dr. Diana Bairaktarova, Andrés is dedicated to understanding the processes through which engineering faculty develop or inhibit empathy toward students in their teaching practice, and the factors that influence these actions. Thus, leveraging empathy to enhance learning experiences.
Alumni
Dr. Adetoun Yeaman
Dr. Adetoun Yeaman is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the First-Year Engineering Program at Northeastern University
Dr. Desen Ozkan
Dr. Desen Ozkan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Connecticut
Dr. Sam Syder
Dr. Sam Snyder is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Florida International University
