News & Events

George Heffernan, department chair and professor of philosophy, collaborated with his colleague Marco Cavallaro of the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany to collect the 14 papers from internationally renowned scholars, co-wrote the Preface, single-authored two major papers and translated several papers from German. The Existential Husserl: A Collection of Critical Essays is now in press and published by Springer.

Dr. James Kaklamanos, associate professor of civil engineering, was interviewed by The Washington Post in conjunction with their coverage of the Morocco earthquake that occurred in Sept. 2023. He appeared in parts of two portions of their live updates after the earthquake: (1) What to do in an earthquake, and (2) Why many buildings in Morocco were vulnerable to the earthquake.

James Kaklamanos, assistant professor of civil engineering, was honored by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of this year’s 10 New Faces of Civil Engineering worldwide. The program recognizes the next generation of civil engineering professionals, 30 years and younger, who have demonstrated the potential to lead the field to new heights. Kaklamanos, who serves as faculty adviser to Merrimack’s ASCE student chapter, was cited for his exemplary work with students.

Dr. Brandi Baldock and co-authors Dr. Anthony Fernandez, Dr. Jimmy Franco, Dr. Brian Provencher and Dr. Mark McCoy from Merrimack’s department of chemistry & biochemistry recently published an article in the Journal of Chemical Education entitled “Overcoming the Challenges of Remote Instruction: Using Mobile Technology to Promote Active Learning.”

Associate Professor of Civil Engineering James Kaklamanos was recently profiled in a monthly feature article by the Seismological Society of America (SSA), as part of their “At Work” column.

Cynthia Carlson, assistant professor of civil engineering, was first author on a paper, “Storm-Water Management as a Public Good Provision Problem: Survey to Understand Perspectives of Low-Impact Development for Urban Storm Water Management Practices Under Climate Change,” that won Best Policy-Oriented Paper of 2016 from the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The paper explored how storm water could be thought of as a “public good” and be managed better.

Sadegh Asgari, associate professor of civil engineering in the School of Science and Engineering, recently co-authored an article published in the Journal of Automation in Construction, a top-tier journal in the field of construction and civil engineering. Asgari’s study introduces a novel method for automatically recognizing activities of multiple heavy construction equipment using sound data collected by a single-channel, off-the-shelf microphone.

Janine LeBlanc-Straceski, associate professor and chair of biology, published a paper, “A Conserved Role of the Unconventional Myosin 1d in Laterality Determination,” in the March 2018 issue of Current Biology. The paper was an international collaboration with colleagues in Germany and France and the culmination of many years of work with LeBlanc-Straceski’s students.

Mechanical Engineering Department assistant professors Anthony Di Carlo and Rickey Caldwell Jr., and former student Courtney Videchak ’19, have co-authored the paper, “Optimization of Spatially Distributed Soil Conductivities for Horizontal Ground Heat Exchanger” which has been accepted by the journal Applied Thermal Engineering.

Dr. Craig Looney, associate professor in the department of physics, gave a presentation entitled “Making high-quality videos on an inexpensive DIY Lightboard (with technical tips relevant to all budgets)” at the Spring 2023 meeting of the New England Section of the American Physical Society.