Faculty & Staff

Professional registration

Professional Engineer, State of New York

Professional interests

I enjoy pursuing scholarly work in innovative teaching and research in solar energy, geophysical and inverse problems in engineering.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer, State of Vermont, Registration 3755

Professional interests

Instrumentation, sustainability engineering, alternatively fueled vehicles

Professional interests

Prior to my career in academics as the Physics and Engineering Department Chair at Bethany Lutheran College in Minnesota, I was a senior design engineer for Kato Engineering where I was responsible for the mechanical and electrical design of motors, generators and support devices. Projects at Kato Engineering included: researching the effects of corona to develop new insulation technology for high voltage generator stator windings; gas turbine generator sets used to generate power from recuperated natural gas expelled during the drilling process for crude oil on offshore oil drilling rigs. I also worked closely with program managers from NAVSEA and the Office of Naval Research to design and oversee AC and DC generator installations at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, and the Naval Station in Norfolk, including FFG (U.S. Frigate) and DDG (U.S. Destroyer) contracts.While a project manager for Minn Kota Motors I helped develop several new products for the marine sport fishing industry. Projects included: the company’s first electric outboard motor and the industry’s first 100% composite trim tabs.

Holder of U.S. patents #5,357,853 and #6,054,790.

Having spent much of his career in engineering and project management for the architectural millwork and construction industries, Curtis came to Norwich in 2009 to work in the development office. In addition to working with corporations and foundations to raise funds for the university and school, he is a member of the Partridge Society, and is an active volunteer for many functions on campus. Curtis is also a volunteer assistant coach for the Norwich Men’s Rugby Team.

Personal interests

My lifelong passion is for my Shelties that I have been showing and breeding since 1976. I have finished a number of champions in both the U.S. and Canada, including some specialty winners. I also love music (especially choral and theater), and outdoor activities, including gardening, swimming, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, hiking and cycling.

Interests & experience

I have over 26 years of experience in the Diesel Technology and Transmission Fluid Shift Dynamics. I came to NU as the Mechanical and Civil Engineering Technician in September of 2007. I also serve as the advisor for the NU Engine Club. I enjoy helping students with their projects and provide the necessary support for their completions.

Professional registration

20 years of experience with microwave antenna design, microwave transmission and radiating systems, airborne electronic warfare systems, radar cross-section reduction, and anechoic test environments.

Personal interests

I enjoy pursuing scholarly work in innovative teaching and research in solar energy, geophysical and inverse problems in engineering.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer, Civil Engineering Idaho, New Hampshire, Washington

Professional interests

Engineering mechanics, mechanics of materials, structural analysis, applied numerical methods, reinforced concrete design, steel design, advanced design of structures, senior design projects, building design, BIM, bridge design, pavement management, roadway design. research interests include structural analysis and design, engineering materials, computer applications in civil engineering, and infrastructure management. Consulting work includes work for Habitat for Humanity, pedestrian bridges in public parks, rails to trails projects.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer: Connecticut, Vermont

Professional interests

Timber structures, building science (i.e., thermal envelope, moisture problems, etc.), BIM and GIS applications, public works administration, distance education. Consulting work includes traditional timber frame construction techniques.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer (Michigan)

Professional interests

My primary interest is in the protection of water resources through sustainable environmental engineering. Specifically, my research focuses on risk based environmental cleanup through multi-compartmental toxicokinetic modeling. My professional experience spans a broad range of environmental engineering projects in the areas of environmental assessments, industrial wastewater management, hazardous waste permitting and remediating petroleum discharges.

Professional registration

American Society of Civil Engineers, Vermont Geotechnical Society, American Society of Engineering Educators

Professional interests

My teaching interests include materials science, freshmen engineering, soil mechanics and foundation engineering. Research interests include the behavior of unbound aggregates and railroad ballast, unsaturated soil mechanics, and pollution movement in soils above the ground water table. I also work as a consultant in the fields of arctic geotechnical engineering, pile foundation design, and port structures.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer, State of Vermont, Registration 3845

Professional interests

Construction management, water resources and surveying.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer: Vermont, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Professional Land Surveyor: Pennsylvania

Professional interests

My interests are fairly broad in the area of water treatment and distribution and wastewater collection and treatment. In the past several years I have supervised student projects of designing wastewater treatment plants for Roxbury, Hartford and Randolph, Vermont also, a water supply and distribution system for Roxbury. I personally designed a disinfection system for a public school. I am currently the representative from Northfield to the Mad River Solid Waste Alliance. For the past five years I represented Northfield at the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District. For the past five years I have been the Chief Proctor for the PE and FE exams in the State of Vermont.In the past I have designed various sewer systems, modifications to water distribution systems, and modifications to wastewater treatment plants. I have designed a number of on-site wastewater systems, both conventional and mound systems. I have generated flood maps and planned a stormwater system.

Currently I am working on an electronic textbook for my Water and Wastewater Treatment course.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer, State of Vermont, Registration 3755

Professional interests

Instrumentation, sustainability engineering, alternatively fueled vehicles

Professional registration

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) — Power and Energy, Education, and Control Systems Societies, American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE), Professional Engineer (Electrical) – Vermont

Professional interests

Prof. Fitzhugh’s research interests are in electric power systems distribution automation through the implementation of Smart Grid technologies, and integration of renewable and sustainable energy resources into the existing electric power grid. He is currently working with Vermont electric utilities on a DOE smart grid grant, and advising a Senior Project that is investigating the control of microgrids. Prior to teaching at Norwich, he worked for over 25 years in the electric power industry.Outside of the classroom, he enjoys gardening, hiking, and fly fishing.

Professional interests

I teach communication systems, and signal processing courses. My research interests are wireless communications, microwave engineering, and radio propagation.I came to Norwich in 2002, after 12 years at Worcester Polytechnic Institute where I was a research scientist in the area of wireless networks and where I got my PhD. Before that I spent 18 years in France. Since coming to Norwich, I have been involved in many senior projects and several summer research projects with students. One senior project team built a wireless radio and won a $50,000 award with a $2M credit line to start a company. Another team built audio amplifiers for guitars, while others built systems for helping firefighters. I am currently involved with students in an autonomous submarine project and an autonomous spacecraft project sponsored by NASA. I am the IEEE club faculty advisor and we have parts for building a quad rotor RC helicopter, and we are looking into building an RC aircraft carrier.

Professional interests

My research focus is design of machine intelligence for industrial process control. Most recently, the principles are being applied to design of robots. One application for distributed intelligence in industry is infrastructure control popularly referred to as SCADA. As dramatized in the movie “Live Free Or Die Hard,” a Cyber attack against a critical infrastructure system can have potentially disastrous consequences. I teach DCSE engineering students about designing systems to withstand an attack when the computer security has been compromised. The key here is teamwork among the machines in the system.Teamwork among industrial machines and robots is a relatively new area of machine intelligence. It is being explored in the public sector through the international RoboCup competition. Norwich engineering students are exposed to the man/machine team design concepts in EE411 and EE321. Sometimes, artificial perception is far more important than what is traditionally thought of as artificial intelligence.

Professional memberships

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE), Acoustical Society of America (ASA), Society of American Military Engineers (SAME)

Professional interests

Prof. Prairie’s interests are centered around sensors and sensing physical phenomenon. After graduating from Norwich, he spent the first part of his career developing optoelectronic devices and materials for the US Air Force. He later worked in industry developing various optical and infrared imaging sensors applications for customers in the US Army and DARPA.After arriving at Norwich in 2008, Prof. Prairie’s teaching interests were in topics related to the use of sensors: the courses include circuits, electronics, control systems and electromagnetic fields. As a practical application of some of the principles taught in the courses, he has developed an affinity to musical instruments as platforms to demonstrate devices such as electromagnetic and piezoelectric pickups. He has also been known to model the acoustics of flutes using the principles of electric transmission lines.

Recently Prof. Prairie began a research project with a couple students to look at ways of maximizing the output of solar photovoltaics (PV) using maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques. The project looks at ways to sense the performance level of small PV modules in various conditions, and to electronically adjust their operating parameters to extract as much power from them as possible.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer, Texas

Professional interests

I spent 11 years in the construction industry prior to entering the engineering profession. Much of that experience was in a management capacity. Although I am new to Norwich, I just recently completed 13 years on the faculty of the University of Texas at Tyler. My teaching interests focus on many aspects of design. These include mechatronics, design methodology, HVAC systems design, computer aided design, and design for sustainability. I have involved undergraduates in research involving fuzzy logic control applications, the development of a process control breadboard system to enhance design education, and the development of microfluidic vacuum pumps.I am very active in engineering educational research. I am a member of the ASEE Educational Research and Methods division and currently chair the ASME Design Education Committee.

I am an avid motorcycle enthusiast and enjoy boating (both power and sail) when I get the opportunity.

Professional memberships

Society of Automotive Engineers, American Physical Society

Professional interests

My professional interests in engineering include most areas of fluid mechanics and computational fluid dynamics. For part of my career, I worked on polymer processing for Avery Dennison at their research center in Pasadena, California where I learned that viscosity is almost never constant, free surfaces can be very unstable and real materials can behave in completely unexpected ways. I then moved on to study chemical kinetics, combustion, sprays and emissions in engines at UW-Madison in Madison, WI and later at General Motors Research in Warren, MI. For the last ten years, I worked in the software development group at Fluent, Inc. (now Ansys, Inc.) in Lebanon, NH focusing on developing and implementing models for reacting flows, Lagrangian multiphase and wall films.

Personal interests

Masters swimming, coaching, hiking, fishing, skiing, snowboarding, playing guitar, fiddling with electronic engine control systems, restoring early Mustangs, riding old motorcycles and spending time with my family, not necessarily in that order.

Professional memberships

Professional Engineer, Virginia

Professional interests

Prior to arriving at Norwich in 2003, I worked as a senior engineer for Applied Research Associates (ARA) in Alexandria, VA. As a team leader, I was responsible for the modeling and simulation of the physical and functional characteristics of military-oriented underground facilities and for assessing the physical vulnerability of hardened structures in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I have also worked as a consultant for ARA validating and improving methodologies for predicting damage inflicted by underground detonations against tunnels.The areas of engineering that I enjoy include aerospace engineering, military engineering and technology, computer-aided design and analysis, robotics, and automated manufacturing. I enjoy teaching a variety of different courses at Norwich, and in particular, I like to teach Materials Science, Manufacturing, and Mechanical Engineering Tools. I am one of the faculty advisors to students working on their Senior Design Projects. I particularly enjoy involving undergraduate students in research projects. Recently, some of the research areas include NASA sponsored projects such as autonomous navigation of micro-space vehicles, underwater robotic vehicles, and design of experiments for testing new materials for spacecraft thermal protection systems.

Professional registration

Professional Engineer, State of New York

Professional interests

I enjoy pursuing scholarly work in innovative teaching and research in solar energy, geophysical and inverse problems in engineering.

Professional interests

Teaching areas: Mechanics (Statics, Dynamics, Strength of Materials), Design, Control SystemsConsulting: Product Liability and Design involving analysis of products in order to determine failure mode (if there was one) or misuse (if applicable), follow up legal depositions and/or court appearances as an expert witness.

Professional interests

Spatial Kinematics, High Speed Machinery, Machine Design.Prof.

Personal interests

Wallace is an avid mountaineer.