Aletta Jacobs professor Ghandchi Tehrani starts at FSE

On June 1, Maryam Ghandchi Tehrani starts as Aletta Jacobs professor at the Faculty of Science and Engineering. Her chair is set up from the Aletta Jacobs Incentive Fund, which created sixteen new chairs across the University of Groningen to promote female academic talent to full professorships. Ghandchi Tehrani will focus on active vibration control, nonlinear dynamics and energy harvesting at the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG) of the UG.

Ghandchi Tehrani will lead the Dynamics and Vibration group at ENTEG. She will develop novel control strategies to either suppress undesirable vibrations in engineering structures, or to enhance vibrations for energy harvesting. She will also extend the application of active control to other disciplines such as offshore engineering for vibration control of flexible risers and turbine blades. She will incorporate nonlinearities in the design of controllers to improve the vibration behaviour of structures. In addition, she will work on advanced optical measurement techniques to obtain full 3D vibration data using high-speed cameras for health monitoring and control purposes.

International teaching grants

Ghandchi Tehrani has been awarded two teaching grants from the Higher Education Academy in the United Kingdom. She led several modules including Linear Systems, Electronics, Drives and Control at undergraduate level and Active Control at MSc level. She taught an intensive course in Engineering in Malaysian Campus (USMC) in the city of Johor Bahru for the last six years and has significant experience in international teaching. At ENTEG, she will be involved in teaching vibration and control modules to Mechanical Engineering master students.

Aletta Jacobs chairs

On International Women’s Day 2020, Rector Magnificus Cisca Wijmenga announced that the University of Groningen would create fifteen new chairs for female professors: the Aletta Jacobs chairs. Now, a year later, sixteen professors have been installed. Aletta H. Jacobs (1854-1929) was the first female student at a Dutch university. After her studies and PhD she contributed to the improvement of working and living conditions for women in many ways. For many years, she played an active part in the international peace movement and the Dutch suffragette movement.

The UG already runs the Rosalind Franklin Fellowship Programme , which allowed the UG to appoint its 100^th talented female academic in 2019.