Three new faculty members in CCE expand expertise in the school.

Bryson Robertson, associate professor of coastal and ocean engineering and director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center, joined Oregon State in October. Previously, he managed the Pacific Institute for Marine Energy Discovery and 2060 Project within the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems at the University of Victoria, Canada. Robertson’s research interests are wind, tidal and offshore wind energy systems, coastal engineering, energy systems analyses, and oceanography.

Barbara Simpson, assistant professor of structural engineering, joined Oregon State after receiving her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

“My goal is to build innovative, optimized, and resilient structural systems that improve building performance and reduce the effects of natural hazards on the built environment,” Simpson said.

Simpson is also interested in the growing frontier of new, visual technology.

“I would like to utilize this technology, especially as related to advanced computational and experimental methods, to better understand structural response and uncertainty,” Simpson said.

After earning her doctorate from the University of New Hampshire and conducting research in the Netherlands as a Fulbright scholar, Meagan Wengrove joined Oregon State as an assistant professor of coastal and
ocean engineering.

“My research works to understand best practices for marsh and sand dune restoration to increase coastal community resilience,” Wengrove said. “I am interested in many aspects of how our coasts and beaches will change into the future – for example, how small-scale sand ripples can feed larger morphologic change which is relevant to how often we need to dredge our inlets to keep ports open for ship navigation.”