Michigan Tech faculty are internationally renowned for contributions to their areas of expertise.
- Professor William Sproule of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is the 2008 recipient of the Robert Horonjeff Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers— the most prestigious award in airport engineering.
- Mathematician Quihing Sha has developed new tools for separating the genes behind some of humanity’s most intractable diseases, including diabetes.
- Faculty and graduate students in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science have placed eleventh among the top-twenty institutions publishing papers on poplar research worldwide. Faculty in the School also ranked first in the nation in scholarly productivity, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Research led by Gregory P. Waite, an assistant professor of geophysics, has produced a new seismic model for figuring out what’s going on inside Mount St. Helens, North America’s most active volcano.
- Miguel Levy, physics professor, researches light and how to manipulate it, including slowing it down. He has been the sole principal investigator or co-principal investigator on $6 million in research funding since coming to Michigan Tech in 2000 and has six patents.
- Professors in civil and environmental engineering are working with Yale University to study Great Lakes water issues as part of a $2 million NSF grant.
- Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich of the School of Forestry and Environmental Science study the interactions and interdependence of wolves and moose at Michigan’s Isle Royale National Park. The project has been ongoing for half a century and is the longest such predator-prey study in the world.
- Faculty from many different academic areas are teaming up with faculty from Michigan State to further support the budding renewable fuels industry in Michigan.