SoE Professors Recognized as Faculty of the Year and Outstanding Engineering Faculty 

Each year the School of Engineering recognizes its faculty with a Faculty of the Year and Outstanding Engineering Faculty award. These awards are an important opportunity for our SoE community to recognize the special achievements and contributions of our school’s dedicated faculty members.  

The Faculty of the Year Award was presented to Distinguished Professor and Board of Governors Professor Yogesh Jaluria, a leading authority in thermal science and engineering, focuses his research on areas such as convection, fires, materials processing, thermal management of electronics, energy, and environment. He is the author or co-author of 10 books, and the editor or co-editor of numerous conference proceedings, books, and special issues of archival journals, the author of more than 600 technical articles. Jaluria’s portfolio also includes patents and copyrighted software. 

The prestigious 2020 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Holley Medal for pioneering achievements in optical fiber drawing is among his numerous honors. An honorary member of ASME, he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Physical Society (APS), International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer ICHMT, and the American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers (ASTFE), for which he served as founding president from 2014 to 2019. 

Before joining the Rutgers Engineering mechanical and aerospace engineering faculty in 1980, Jaluria was a member of the research staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories.  

Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Nicole Fahrenfeld is the recipient of the Outstanding Engineering Faculty Award. This award is presented in recognition of a faculty member’s research contributions through scholarly publications, conference presentations, speaker invitations, and awards.  

Fahrenfeld’s research focuses on the fate of microbial and organic chemical contaminants across water media with funding from NSF, CDC, NOAA, and the Water Research Foundation, among others. Her team won Paper of the Year in 2019 from Environmental Science Water Research & Technology, outstanding paper awards in 2021 and 2022 from Water Environment Research, and the 2024 Research Award from NJ American Water Works Association. She is an NSF CAREER awardee and was recognized in 2024 among the “40 under 40” by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists.  

Additionally, she serves as the undergraduate program director for environmental engineering, a program jointly administered between the School of Engineering and School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.