Engineering Unleashed Faculty Development

Jessica Fick earned her PhD and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in computational solid mechanics, from John Hopkins University. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. She is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and an Assistant Dean at UW-Platteville. Jessica Fick's research interest focus on failure mechanisms and their connection to the difference scales, from the microscopic details to the macroscopic process of failure. A computationalist at heart, she developed a numerical tool to predict fragment sizes for different rates of loading which includes an elastic-viscoplastic material model, thermal softening and conduction, communication through the wave equation, and failure due to void nucleation, growth, and coalescence. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Fick worked for the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, MD where she found a love of shock physics and failure analysis. Jessica Fick typically teaches courses in design and mechanics in the mechanical engineering curriculum; her primary focus is senior design. She has incorporated EM in all her classes after first learning about it at the 2018 KEEN National Conference (KNC) and an ICE workshop in 2019. Jessica is currently serving as a KEEN Leader on her campus and the Chair of the KEEN Leadership council. She has previously coached for both ICE and KNC.

Heath LeBlanc is Chair of the Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science (ECCS) Department at Ohio Northern University (ONU) and passionate about learning and motivating students to want to learn. The KEEN framework for the entrepreneurial mindset emphasizes value creation, curiosity, and connections, which are all key to effective learning and effectively utilizing what we have learned. The people of KEEN share this passion, which makes it an amazingly collaborative and supportive community.

Ben teaches Computer Science at the University of Portland where his research focuses on applications of machine learning spanning from robotics to bioinformatics. He has also taught undergraduate and graduate students at Seattle University. His interest in entrepreneurial education stems from his experience as a co-founder of a robotics and automation company. He believes that an entrepreneurial mindset is a critical component of a well rounded liberal arts education.

Dr. Horne has taught at the University of Wisconsin Platteville for five years; prior to this he also taught at the University of North Texas and Utah State University. His doctoral work was completed at Utah State University but included on-site collaborations with the University of Toronto (~1 month) and Ecole Centrale de Paris (~9 months). An additional research collaboration took him to Sopron, Hungary. His PhD is in Mechanical Engineering, and his research work has included thermal experiments and simulations ranging from the nano-scale all the way up to entire buildings. He has experience with a number of programming languages including the following: C/C++, Fortran, Ada, Python, Java, Julia, Javascript, Rust and others. He has built distributed memory cluster computers and written simulations on the using MPI for Monte Carlo simulation, sensitivity analysis, PDE solution, and more. Current research projects include Ab initio Uncertainty Quantification of Particle-image Velocimetry, Rheological Model Fits of ASME Polymer Data, and Mirror Pinhole Defect Identification. Dr. Horne's teaching experience includes Thermal Systems Laboratory, Fluid Dynamics, Introduction to Computational Methods, Computational Methods in Engineering, and Computational Fluid Dynamics. In 2019 he we selected for the Early Career Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence by the University of Wisconsin Platteville, and in the same year was recognized for Excellence in Teaching by the National Society of Leadership and Success. His current pedagogical efforts include KEEN on Stories and integrating Entrepreneurial Minded Learning into his classes.