CAVS Researcher, Burch Earns Top Research Award for New Faculty

November 17, 2021

A Mississippi State engineering faculty member has been recognized as one of the top young researchers in the southeast by the American Society for Engineering Education.

Reuben Burch, a Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems researcher and an associate professor of industrial and systems engineering, recently earned the 2021 New Faculty Researcher Award from the Southeast Section of ASEE. The highly competitive award honors a faculty member who has fewer than six years of teaching or research experience but who has demonstrated excellence in both areas.

"I'm very honored to receive this award from the Southeast Section of ASEE," Burch said. "I appreciate that they recognize the importance of applying real-world problems to what we teach in the classroom."

Burch is the third Bagley College of Engineering faculty member to claim the award in the last seven years and fourth overall. Veera Gnaneswar Gude, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, earned the award in 2016. Cindy Bethel, a professor of computer science and engineering, took home the honors in 2015. Additionally, Adrienne Minerick, a former chemical engineering faculty member, was recognized in 2008.

Burch was recognized primarily for his work with the Athlete Engineering research program. The multi-disciplinary team includes faculty and staff from such on-campus areas as engineering, athletics, textiles, kinesiology and sociology, as well as researchers from CAVS and NSPARC. The group is focused on developing wearable sensors that can capture lab-quality data outside of a lab setting.

"I actually look at this award as a team award because it wouldn't have been possible without the efforts of everyone who has been a part of the Athlete Engineering program," Burch said. "It's a large, interdisciplinary team but they are the reason for the success we've been having so far."

Burch currently holds the Jack Hatcher Endowed Chair for Engineering Entrepreneurship. He also serves as an associate director at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) and is a faculty research fellow at the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center, or NSPARC.

He was recently inducted into the Bagley Academy of Distinguished Teachers and earned Bagley's Teaching Award for Distance Learning in 2020.

Burch earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Mississippi State in 2002 before earning his Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering through MSU's online program in 2014.

The Bagley College of Engineering is online at www.bagley.msstate.edu.

CAVS is online at www.cavs.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi's leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.

By Philip Allison